when it don't come easy

red lights are flashing on the highway i wonder if we're gonna ever get home everywhere the waters getting rough your best intentions may not be enough but if you dreak down i'll come out and find you -- is it the guitar and singing? is it the unresovled grief? was it the too rough or that he didn't notice my body tensing up? or that when i said i wasn't sure if it was too rough and he kept going and i let him maybe its that we're doing an all in thing (sex) and a not at all in thing (non-relationship) i just feel like i've walked in to a space where i'm no longer safe i'm moving ahead with my heart but there is no committment- is that it? or that i dreamt all night about j and derek fighting... derek throwing a fit b/c j was there, camping in the grass. or is that i feel like i still should drive out and find d? like it feels wrong to leave him on the highway? or is that i've been ditched on the highway too many times for me to be ready to trust again?

august 31 2020. what was supposed to be the start of the new school year. what i met (almost) every day of summer to plan. instead? kids scrambling to get on calls. me: leaning into the camera too close, making my forehead big and shiny and my eyes look tired. or maybe they just are tired. i am an english teacher who isn't bothering to capitalize. no, i am a literature teacher. who teaches english to american students anyway? aren't we all trying not to speak american anymore? most of my thought energy- and physical strength- when it wasn't spent on getting my kids on their calls, and helping them to keep from crying when they felt not smart enough for the math or reading or writing on their calls- was spent on the same conversation i have had since june 1. when will we reopen in person? how am i equipped to make this decision? i am not a scientist or doctor or expert. who is on the LT? and why is it called the LT? i have felt out of my league before, but the implications have never been so big. as in, i may let my baby cry through the night- but i dont'decide that for the whole neightborhood. or i may get divorced, but the col-d-sac doesn't have to follow suit. now suddenly the dominoes could start with me. what if it were different? where is my coastal town? where is that quiet place by the water where you are and it is blue and calm and i have this deep feeling of tranquility that seems to allude me these days... i guess blogger has gone to retro type. will i know when this nightmare is over? will it declare itself and run? show its grimy teeth and drool? or will it slip away slowly, like toddlerhood, until all is left is relief and an exhaustion so bone deep you almost forget to celebrate? i haven't written in so long i feel jagged around the edges. what did i used to write about, before i had work that consumed me? i wrote about v. maybe humans aren't meant for creative expoloration- most of us. maybe humans are designed to imprint the same form over, and over, and over again. maybe humans can duplicate and replicate and even add variation- but new forms totally freak us out and paralize us. maybe none of us really know what to do with something as unpredictible and unweildy as a pandemic- -- i am alternately bored and restless and vengeful. i check the news to see if covid has upended my school system and secretly hope it has. i am tired and heavy and uninspired. i hope to god there is something around the next horizon that makes me feel alive, again.

chalice

chalice I am not capable of spectacular personal holiness. I can hold the cup though, during Eucharist, and offer you the blood of Christ. I do not know what it means to attain the sort of set-apartness the bishop spoke of Sunday, but I do know the wren says something in her repetitive “ chee chee chee” that almost sounds like an blessing if I pay attention. And lifting the chalice to your lips, I recognized that look behind your eyes, the one of wanting and restlessness and fear--it id my look; did I leave it there for you to find? Or did we both happen to find it at the same moment (serendipitously)? What shapes are the shadows of the birch branches making across my table as I write? Are they spectral images or words from another tongue? If the tree was red, like the dogwood next to it, all aflame with Autumn, then I would say Pentecost--it means announcement and amen, arrival and approval. But no--these shadows disappear as I trace them, then reappear as something else. I know this though: the sun on my cheek is steady, and warms me to my bones, though by next week it will have given way to its weaker winter form. All things change, and of thine own unchanging have we known thee. If I walk this same path every day for a year, will a path be worn in my soul that is steady, reliable? Today the leaves are crunching under my feet; the sky is making such a display I wonder what all the boasting is about. But the air is calm, and it is the promise of safety that makes me know what is coming next must be close at hand: the upbraiding of the leaves, the stripping bare of the trees, the long cold nakedness of winter. Tell me your story again then, birch tree. When all your leaves have fallen--when your branches are stark bare. Will I be able to understand better then? Or will the meaning always be allusive? I would like to know why I feel the Autumn sun as human touch on my cheek, and the smell of leaves as homecoming. I would like to know why I find reassurance in the recitative song of the wren, and in the expansiveness of the nearly cloudless sky. I do know this: I feel gifted. Though they are not exclusively for me, because I am wanting, they are mine for taking. Like the bread and wine; and what do I need to know about the giver except his goodness? Maybe more will come, walking this same path every day. In time. Or maybe not. But for today, receiving is enough.

On Burying a Chicken at the Farm

On burying a chicken at the farm I worked at the farm with Audrey’s third grade class yesterday. It was the last light-hearted day of Autumn before this arctic frost came; the one that was supposed to arrive after dark tonight, but which came early, catching us without our jackets at noon. It was supposed to be a free day. The kids began by pulling radishes and playing with Gustov, giving each other wheelbarrow rides. Then Audrey and Olivia noticed a bantam not moving. After an anxious half-hour of watching her breath come in shallow gulps, she roused herself one last time and died. It is impossible not to feel the vulnerability of all living things when you bury an animal that weighs maybe two pounds. Her neck wouldn’t stay straight; her legs were curled under her iridescent feathers that caught the light with such radiance I wanted to say, “hush, you are dead, now’s not the time to glimmer.” It was the first handful of dirt we put on her body that made the kids start to cry; something about the permanence of it--I found myself saying, quietly, out of obedience to some higher order, “to dust we have come, to dust we shall return.” Because for the kids it was not just that tiny un-named chicken we were burying; it was their toad and guinea pig and hermit crab, their great-uncle and aunt and grandma. We make these lists, of those we love that have died or will die--and rehearse them at each new passing. I thought we just made them as adults, but of course we began them when we were younger. Clem, who’s father has lung disease and was on the transplant list until recently, said to me on the way back, his eyes shining, “I’ve dug two graves now, I don’t want to dig any more. I had to dig that one with my hands; look--I still have dirt under my finger nails.” What can I say? I know? Because I don’t. I don’t know what it has cost him to dig those graves, as he has considered the people that he loves. Nor do I know which way his father’s illness will go. I would like to say, Its alright, but that’s not a promise I can make. Ben Trueblood said he is not afraid of death, because he has been prepared well by the shape of his education in a Waldorf school in Chicago. And, he suspects, by an engaged observance of the Day of the Dead. Incredulous, I pressed him--are you not afraid of the void of death? The fact that you will be gone and all this will continue? I know my body will be useful, he said, and I don’t know what will happen to my soul, but I don’t fear it. I suppose if I believed this life was a practice run, I would not be afraid of death: if I knew I could have a second chance to do better, to be more wholly human, then I would not be afraid. But now, I do not feel ready to let go. In part my fear comes from shadows of my own making: the habit I have of using my small lamp of truth to project large spectral shadows behind me, making even the good things in my life seem haunted. And I imagine a re-ordering of desires is in order too, though I have only a faint idea of what that means. In the meantime, what if one of the best gifts we can give our children is a proper approach to dying? Steiner believed the ability to approach death without fear begins simply with learning to sleep and breath--coincidentally, two twin pillars of early Waldorf education. Are we then, in seeking a holistic education for our children, teaching them something about dying as well as about living?

Autumn Equinox

Saturday September 22 2012 Autumn Equinox Job 40 15 "Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly... Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron. It is the first of the great acts of God- only its Maker can approach it with the sword. Is this the passage William Blake had in mind when he wrote “Tyger, Tyger”? And yet this is the God who has promised us an everlasting mercy. Yet I do not know anything that is everlasting. Not even memory is everlasting. Not even dust or the terra-cotta army men buried alive in China or books, set out like little toy ships at sea, carrying a persons words and thoughts from the afterlife, making it okay to die. (A person leaves behind something--a book--an idea--a photo--a letter--a child--does that person really die when the last person who remembers them dies?) Certainly of all the things that surround me, tangible and intangible, I am the least everlasting. The bowl that holds the apples we picked last week will, under reasonable circumstances, outlive me. It may venture to a different state; be passed down to my children, end up in a thrift store. It could see the invention of silent, waste-less automobiles and the extinction of the telephone. The apples in the bowl, ripe and smelling faintly of cider, probably will not outlive me. But the branches, the seeds, the flowers fruit and stem, the entire fecundate cycle of life in that one apple true will outlive me. My tea pot, which I use every day and never thank, will almost certainly outlive me. It will never need a root canal or see the physical therapist. It will never get sleep apnea or glasses, or arthritis. I have become so uncomfortably conscience of my own mortality I am sometimes surprised to find myself still living. My mailbox, made of punched tin, will sit and sit, wordlessly ferrying out my letters and opening its mouth to receive them back. It sits now, its red flag raised like an omen--not saying a word about the contents of the letter in its mouth, holding it still between its teeth like a baby hiding candy, not sucking, not chewing. Hoping not to be found out. It will not disclose what he wrote, or didn’t write, to his brother: about losing dad, and how the family seems without a guide at the helm now, how we can’t seem to find our way to say nice things to each other like we did before. Even that letter could outlive me. But if I am not here, am not around to hear it read again, what does it matter if the letter outlives me? Does a living memory of me effect me once I am dead? Can the dead, from where they are now, see and feel for us? If they are, as NT Wright believes, not yet in the new heaven and new earth (the last and final resurrection) what can they witness of us? Or do they care to witness? Have they already forgotten this “great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us?” Will, as Marilyn Robinson suggests, this world be Troy, and all that has passed here the ballad they sing in the streets? Or will it be a something fainter than a memory, like a dream you wake from and only vaguely recall--contours, maybe, and a feeling or a color--a pattern brings back something --or a face makes you think maybe you remember--but then you put it behind you as the day broadens with its realities (make the coffee) and demands (check email), the tangible solid things at hand put this other shapeless dream out of your mind--will that be all?

on shoes and dying

But what I keep thinking about, when I have time to think, is how incredibly fast a life can be spent. You spend the first few years clearing your vision, learning about your family and surroundings. You spend the next ten years or so striving against the forces around you, making your own way, head-strong and determined. Thinking you will live forever and have all the time in world and not seeing any end in sight at all. Intoxicated by youth. So free you could almost imagine you are a bird and will take off at any moment. Then the tethers come one by one: marriage, which turns out to be more of a stake in the ground holding you to one place than a launch pad. Children, who turn out to be more stakes in the ground rather than elements of self-definition. Then you are 32, and stare death straight in the face: it is sitting in your living room with that terrible death rattle, not blinking, not even opening its eyes, as quiet and demure as a church mouse. It is not the storm or emergency or accident of your nightmares, but serene and calm as the still small voice, taking the life of your father-in-law, hour by hour, without reason or explanation. And then there it is: the huge ragged gaping hole in your family. Mother, sisters, brothers, cousins. Father still in all the pictures. And his shoes now, scattered all around the house: cowboy boots by the bedside stand (why? but I don’t have the heart to move them), Keens by the backdoor, runners too. He had some beautiful shoes--when you wore the leather ones to church Sunday and offered me the chalice I looked down and saw those shoes and could barely lift my face to receive. Joel’s shoes are in our house, but he is not. His shoes have outlived him. There is a certain amount of comfort in having these physical reminders: they are heavy and feel substantial. They still smell of Papa, and have the impression of his feet marked on their sole. Shoes are not like impersonal undershirts, that you buy in bulk and throw in the wash every day. Nor are they too personal like underwear (what do you do with someone’s underwear when they die? Bundle it up and throw it in the trash? That seems somehow thoughtless...) But they are oddly intimate: here are these shoes, waiting patiently for someone to inhabit them. When I see the old leather cowboy boots sitting so lively by the bed, I can almost see the legs and torso of that dear person too--and it hurts to have such a clear picture of someone I will never see again. Sometimes it feels like the shoes hang around as cruel reminders that Joel is gone and not coming back, and yet they--a piece of leather and rubber stitched by a machine--get to hang around for the next 50 years to watch our children grow up. I will spend the next eighteen years, Lord willing, nurturing my children. Right now that is almost all I do: schooling them during the day, music lessons at night, reading before bed, brushing hair and teeth and throwing clothes in the washer--then preparing to do it all again in the morning. They grow so slowly it seems it will always be the same--but I have learned this summer that nothing ever stays the same. Last summer I watched the kids go out in the sailboat with Joel and Lindy; I took a few pictures, it was so pretty watching the flat water and the flapping sail, the small blue boat make turns in the cove. Lindy sold the sailboat this week. And she needed to; it is good she did. But I would be lying if I didn’t say there was a pang in my heart when I heard it was gone, that tangible reminder of their dreams together, that proof that Joel was there out on the cove. And I had no idea last year--could not have imagined that would be the kids last ride with Papa. Just as I’ve learned to find my way in the world, I now see death just over the hill. It seems not far off--make it through 30’s, then middle age--my body creaking more, graying. My parents going first, then following. How am I supposed to live when it seems you can no more hang on to a moment here than you can hold water in your hand? How can I go about my days so that when I look back (in the blink of an eye) I will be pleased? Or at least resigned? I know the Westminster Catechism. And I am in no mood to argue theology. But in practical terms, what does it mean to live in such a way that when you come to die, you are ready? And are you ever ready to let go of the people you love? My grandparents, much more experienced in this, seem much more ready to let go than I am. Have they not shared this secret because it cannot be shared--it has been to learned by each person individually, and can no more be communicated than a piece of music can be parsed out and exegeted?

December

Advent 2010
Dec 8 6:30 AM

"I am the root and the offspring of David, *
I am the bright morning star."
"Come!" say the Spirit and the Bride; *
"Come!" let each hearer reply!
Come forward, you who are thirsty, *
let those who desire take the water of life as a gift.


I am thirsty. Not only for the presence, and the stillness, but the understanding of true repentance. I am thirsty for a fuller, richer life that I feel is around the corner--that I sometimes glimpse when I stop in the afternoon and look up and see this place--this home--for what it is: a beautiful, busy nurturing ground, a haven for these sprouting humans, just showing green about the ears and not yet ready for the elements. I want: space for them to grow unencumbered. Space for us to have family time without feeling crowded by unwanted commitments and neighbors. I want to be able to see my family.
I want discernment, peace and resolution to this inner struggle.

The elements of your arrival were very unexpected. fantastical, even. a young unwed girl. a stable barn. shepherds and angels together; men from the east on camels. if you come in unexpected ways, fantastical ways, am i missing you if i am looking in the most expected ho-hum places?

I think I have now made my peace with full-time motherhood. I no longer wish, all that often, for the freedom of my unfettered self: though sometimes, a strain of a poem or a melody will send me reeling in to memory, and I am--for a moment--lost. But I am better able to recover myself. It is partly the wisdom of “even God, in proclaiming the goodness of creation with the foreknowledge of its downfall, was accepting imperfection.” There must be truth to this, though I don’t like to acknowledge it. I want to tighten and tweak ever area of my life to perfection: the floors mopped to a shine if I have my way, my practicing completed each day. The children respectful and orderly, my husband brushing his teeth his morning. Our budget tight and crisp, everyone eating their vegetables. Time for exercise each day; time for prayer and quiet.

Then their is real life: the baby wakes in the night, is soaked through, everyone rises in the morning tired and crabby. I forgot to buy dish soap, the garbage didn’t get taken up to the road in time; we are late getting up our Christmas tree. I feel rushed and unsettled: will Hudson learn to read in time? Are we doing enough to curb Audrey’s sass? Are we ruining the baby’s teeth by putting her down with a bottle? Will be we able to sell our house before the foundation settles and has to be re-built?

These are the questions that assail me at 4 AM when I am craving sleep but can’t find it. Why don’t I write more? I miss reading. I have thank-yous to say and send. I need to run another load of diapers.

This is the meat and potatoes of life, and I am thankful for it. When I consider the alternative--I barren house, no joyful kid noises, no protesting and rowdy kid noises--I am grateful to be caretaker of these budding human sprouts. But I am also, in the midst of the kinetic energy of growth, longing for stillness and rest.

shells

The kids and I began to tidy up the backyard yesterday from its months of summer disuse. I never thought I would say such a thing, but in the summer months, our back yard is vacant and despondent. Branches and sticks were strewn about, and there were piles and piles of leaves (we have a “natural” backyard--as in, no grass, just pine needles and mulch carpeting the dirt floor under our thick canopy of trees). We found a small forest of mushrooms sprouted overnight after days of rain: thin and translucent in their newness, their round faces cupped toward heaven like tiny fragile teacups, their stems hollow straws to drink down the autumn rains. They seemed to come from a different world entirely: a world where even the transient mushroom (for certainly with the coldsnap they are gone even this morning) receives such minute attention to detail that the ruffles and ribbons around their faces are fit for the bonnet of a dignitary. Watching these feathery miniature trees poke their heads through the mulch and dead leaves is almost enough to make you believe in the fairy world: their early shoots like alien antennas cautiously on the lookout for sympathetic intelligence.

We discovered something else as well: shells. Giant conch shells, large Pacific Northwest clam shells, twisted thick white listening seashells. I knew where they came from: my father-in-law made us a seashell mobile as a going-away gift when we moved here, and it blew down in a storm this summer. We packed up these shells strewn together with sturdy nylon string in a box along with our books and dishes and clothes when we said goodbye to our family and the Pacific Ocean and drove with these shells the three thousand miles to the other side of the continent: and hung them up as our home flag when we arrived. I guess you could say we hung the shells the way some folks hang up a confederate flag: to let people know where our loyalty lies. But sometime in one of those late summer hurricanes you never get in Washington state, our shells were strewn across the yard with the branches and long-leaf pine. What would an archeologist have made of these shells if in two hundred years they unearthed them here, in this mud and tar valley of North Carolina? They are without question from another world: thick as bone, bleached white, round as a child’s face. They have tumbled in the sea for how long--months? years? They could survive here, even, with this humidity and mosquitoes and hurricanes. They could bear the lightening storms and the rain and even the torrent of oak leaves and long leaf pine that tried to bury them in the week.

Then why did I feel like I was picking up the one thing I had thoughtlessly discarded when I placed them, one by one, in a straight row, on the deck yesterday--as if they suddenly had become fragile and in need of care, like little children? Why did I feel like I was reclaiming something I had nonchalantly discarded? Like a teenager who has not yet learned what is important; like a housewife who gives away all her china just to be rid of the clutter--I was suddenly discovering what was valuable again.

We have moved enough. This is not a journey I am eager to make again: the arduous pilgrimage of the soul where you agonize for months (years?) about where to plant your roots and raise your children. I think I have nearly had enough of going back and forth: now I think we almost know where we are from and where we are going.

Mt. Rainier

Isaiah 55:6-11

Seek the Lord while he wills to be found; *
call upon him when he draws near.

This verse implies something that makes me uncomfortable: if there is a time when God draws near, then there must be a time when he is away. This concept of God’s distance is puzzling because we have been taught since Sunday School that God is right in our hearts and any time we want to speak to him day or night he is like a genie--pop!-- right out of our heart in to our minds and we can have this private little tete-to-tete with him. Anytime. All the time. Ultra, omni-accessible, like our i-phones and cells--ready always at our fingertips to take our calls or requests. Is it possible that God is not “at our fingertips” like we imagine? Are we doing God a disservice by imagining him to be at our beckon call any time we are doing sinning and ready to repent, or afraid and in need of comfort, or in distress and need wisdom?

We know throughout scripture God is present to his people. And we are told he desires nothing more than for us to be reconciled to him. But still: Isaiah clearly implies that there are times, or seasons, when God draws near to us. An example from nature: I grew up in the shadow of Mount Rainier. Mount Rainier is no small hill; at nearly 15,000 feet, it was the first thing I saw out of my bedroom window in the morning, and the marker I used when learning to drive my way around town (ie, the mountain will be behind you). Though the mountain was quite stationary, our experience of the mountain was constantly changing. There would be entire weeks when, blocked by clouds and rain, we would not even get a glimpse of Mt Rainier. When we had out of town guests and this happened it was particularly frustrating, because without the mountain’s large bulk peaking over the Cascades, you can’t even imagine it was there. We would point and say “right there is Mount Rainier” but really you could not even see a hint of the foothills: it made us feel rather foolish. But then--one afternoon you look up and the clouds have suddenly melted and the mountain is there in all its splendor. And also: sometimes, around sunset, the mountain would appear to have grown so much bigger--it would seem to have crept right up to our doorstep. There were times it actually looked like it was sitting on our back porch.

Does the mountain draw near? Does God move away from us? Or are there seasons when our view of God is less obstructed and we can access him with more ease? Are there times in our lives when we see God more clearly, times he actually appears--like Mt Rainier--closer at hand? Give us grace, God, to look up and see you at those times you reveal yourself to be sitting on our back porch.

autumn

Endings are good. Maybe that is why I find autumn so satisfying. The days of this year have come and gone; some have been productive, some have been wasted. We spent some in sorrow, some fighting, many we flitted away thinking about something else. But now the year is nearly spent, we can see the end in sight: the turning of the leaves indicates that we are in the home stretch. It always seems to me that the earth is very satisfied with herself this time of year. Yes, we have committed many wrongs, to the soil, to each other. To ourselves. And so on. But if you look at a maple tree in full golden bloom, it is hard not to understand transcendence. This shortest season is certainly the most magnificent, even if the real beauties are the quiet ones: the crisp foretaste of the air, or its woodsy aftertaste. The way the fallen leaves make another roof over ours, covering the skylights and making shadows dance across the kitchen table.

I do not understand how judgement and joy can coexist. Throughout scripture we are asked to accept this: God’s perpetual joy in his people, his continual judgement of his people. In autumn, it seems for a minute the judgement holds it breath (waiting for the death of winter, perhaps) and there is pleasure in all things, a space to breath without fear of the harsh biting winds of winter or the driving rains of spring or the suffocating heat of summer. We open our eyes, blink, finding the world so much more habitable than we remembered last week. We are grateful, perhaps even more so because we know this autumnal stillness is fleeting.

crumbs

The sheets are running in the wash. There is construction still underway next door, and the shrill call of birds as they prepare for the sunshine today will bring.
I am trying to figure out what the light playing on the leaves of the newly green trees reminds me of: transcendence? A certain otherness, a knowing. The sun has come down to rest, with a newness and gladness about itself, about fifty yards out between our back yard and our neighbors, in a patch of dense and newly leafed-out oak and elm trees. The leaves look white and silver in the brilliance of the early morning light; they tremor, a bit, with the wind, and seem to whisper a secret I can just barely make out: this is the stuff of real life, the life that matters the sun glint off the spring oak leaves. The dappled sunlight falling through them, making patterns, faint and indiscernible, on the kitchen table—through the skylight, on the hardwood floors amongst the bits of rice still resting there after dinner last night.

These are the things we would be wise to notice: the pattern of the brown thrasher as it turns and returns to its nest in our boston fern on the front porch. The slight sigh of the wind as it rustles through our yards, past the hammering and lawn-mowing and industrious work of the day. Where are you, Lord, amongst all these trees and all this sighing? We are so weary of ourselves and our work. We labor—all day—at the most meaningless tasks. Then we lay down at night and dream that the ocean has come up to our front door and now we have an ocean view: ocean liners, freight liners, tug boats and sails line up with lights on for a race in the morning: and I am standing in the kitchen trying to explain (to myself?) how we got all the water there: “our view is much better when there is an ocean to look at.”

My dreams tell me I am homesick for water. For the expanse of it, its vastness. The perspective it brings to our small doings; for the quiet it brings with its noise.

Lord, I want to notice the little gifts you give today—the crumbs. May they be enough—more than enough—to nourish me. I have not watched, looked, listened. I have not paid enough attention. I know that your attention to Tabitha was not a dip in the action of Acts. The Gentile woman who asked you to give her the crumbs from under the table was not being overly self-debasing: she knew a secret I have forgotten: your crumbs, even the tiniest of crumbs, are enough to nourish us for a lifetime. They are the only substantial sustenance we get –the rest of our meals are glorious pretending, like peter pan’s feeding of the lost boys in Neverland: all the right gestures, places set, words correctly spoken—but no nourishment actually consumed. I want to get to the place of nourishment, to the place of secret crumbs.

Children, Mozart and the Holy Spirit

April 12, 2010

John 14:16-17: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.

I have come to realize there are a few things you cannot receive unless you have learned to quiet your heart and listen: the gift of children, music and the Holy Spirit.

Children are with us. They are often loud, obnoxious, annoying. They speak a different language than grown adults: they do not care about money, time or efficiency. In the midst of a pedantic bedtime routine, they can ask the most profound questions: why is it so difficult to hear them?

Watching my children, from very tiny infants, and learning to listen to them, has taught me a whole new way of listening and communicating that has very little correlation with what we consider communication and language in the adult world. My baby, now 9 months, turns her head. I follow her gaze and see she is looking at the cat; I watch her eyes, and share in her experience of wonder and joy at this animal she has no name or category for, and finds new awe in every time she beholds it. So there is witnessing with them the new wonders of the world. Then there is also learning to listen behind their words to the pain they do not know how to express. Then there is learning to notice with them all the small things of the world: stopping for twenty minutes on a walk to watch a caterpillar climb up a tree, guessing which side of the fork in the trunk he will take—watching, awaiting that slow, slow crawl to see what he decides (do caterpillars decide?) Do carrots mind when we pick them? Does it hurt when we harvest lettuce? These are questions I answered gardening with my six-year old this weekend. Responding to a comic in the Sunday paper I said, “no one can live below the ground.” “Except the elves” retorted Hudson quickly. Who knows? If there is a fairy world of tiny quiet things, nearly invisible, it surely would be the children that would notice them, not us. We have grown so cumbersome and obtuse in our thinking; we steamroll and interrupt and run ahead. My children have taught me how to listen.

Which has been a surprising gift in regards to music. I have played harp and piano since I was very young. I know—have known—how to listen to a piece of music I am working on, its nuances and flavors. But to listen to a new piece; an unfamiliar piece… to make a new piece familiar—I had very little interest. What would I gain? How do I approach such a thing? And to what end?

But watching an infant work up—for three weeks-- the fine motor skills to roll over—prepares a person to sit and listen to the cadence changes in Mozart. Here is why: in both cases you set yourself down, that heavy bulky load of self-concern and narcissism. You must clear your mind (again, we are being prepared to receive the Holy Spirit) and watch and listen (how many times were we told this by Jesus in the gospels?) It seems so simple; it is directly in front of our noses: the baby rolling over; the bluebirds building a nest in the fern on the front porch; the slight variations in Bach’s musical offering. These things are spoken in a language that has become foreign to our tongue, because we have learned to only watch and listen to what serves us most boldly, efficiently and immediately. How do we expect the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to us—in our inbox? Message us on facebook?

But then I found this other language: this language that lifts up the small things and does not denigrate the little, hardly noticeable things of our world. I became interested in what the birds are saying in the mornings. I began to notice, with greater interest, the cycle of the leaves on the oak tree out back, and the birch out front. I became, over the months I worked on the Mozart, increasingly content with my job as keeper of the small things in our house: the quotidian tasks of laundry, cooking, cleaning. I saw with clear eyes how much work there is to be done with our children, and found fresh energy to bring to the task of discipline, relationship, physical, emotional and spiritual growth. And I discovered a secret—or what had been a secret to me—that it is the small, ever-present but nearly unnoticeable things of the world that do, in the end, shame the wise. It is the weak things of the world, the things that are tucked away in church nurseries and paved over for highways and heard only by white-haired concert goers that will, in the end, shame the wise. It is a secret I take so much joy in, because it is a secret by which I have found life: the Holy Spirit does not come in the earthquake, the fire or the wind. He comes, as we have always known, in a still small voice.

This is a secret I used to know as a child; I guess this should not surprise me, I imagine all children, if they are left to be children, know it one way or another. I was left to be a child for quite awhile: with very little media exposure and lots of time in the woods, I had an imagination and understood the importance of old trees. The old trees were wise and quiet. As I walked the mile-long one-lane road to our house, I would listen for their secrets. Gazing up at them, I imagined I could see their faces, hazy but present—and understood that they held their arms up in praise of their Creator, as an example for us to follow. As a child I understood instinctively the passage in Psalms, “if we do not praise God, the trees will raise up their arms in praise to Him”. All trees reminded me of our duty to praise God, and their quietness reminded me to listen. Until I left home for college, I continued to rise early in the morning and run the thin road that stretched east and west, watching the sun barely begin to make a dent in the darkness that was 5 AM. I would remember God’s promise to remove my sin as far as the east is from the west, and I could feel, in that barely sunrise, how far the east really is from the west. I am not sure I had ever even heard the term meditate; if I had, I would have been uncomfortable with the concept. But meditate was what I did every morning.

Now I am without the luxurious expanse of nature around me. Yes, we have the trees that form a canopy over our house. But we have freeway noise and neighbors and too much concrete. We have houses around us, and planned grass and shrubs. No more deer and porcupine and towering oaks. No more Mt. Rainier and Puyallup valley and expanse of clear blue and fog below, the river in the distance. But the listening is the same, even if the avenues are different: and the Holy Spirit promises that God is here. But…there is the caveat: The Holy Spirit is here, but the world cannot receive, because it neither sees nor knows. Do we see? Do we hear?

Invisible

You are invisible. Or so says my gmail header. But is provides an
interesting description for this stage of my life.

When I go to the grocery store with my three children, or to
Target--these are really the only two places I go with them, unless it
is to the park or the post office--I get the same sort of treatment,
non-verbal and verbal. I am a nearly invisible herder of three small
people who are adorable and annoying at the same time (I could almost
hear the man behind me at Costco yesterday... "really, she has to shop
with ALL THREE?") I am dwarfed by their liveliness, and by the
spectacle we make as a four-some. But I am assumed to be nothing more
than an at-home mom with concerns for her kids, her grocery bill, the
cleanliness of her home and her children's manners. I know people
assume these things about me because I assume them about other moms I
see when I am out: often wearing sweats, or the same old zip-fleece,
like me. Trying to decide and price-check and carry on a conversation
and herd at once. Talking on the cell phone in the grocery aisle. At
Target on Tuesday morning at 10 AM (who else is at Target on Tuesday
morning at 10 AM except us?)

Women like us, who go to Target at 10 AM on Tuesday morning, what more
could we have to say to each other--to contribute to the world--whose
concerns are limited to what kind of toothpaste our husbands prefer or
whether there is a considerable difference in the quality of Gold
Medal flour versus the generic market pantry label? Who ponders if it
is worth purchasing the cheaper cat food, wondering about salmonella and
food recalls and making impulse purchases on natural cleaning supplies
and gentle-smelling hand-soap. Those of us whose days are reduced to
walking behind small children and sweeping up their crumbs, putting
their clothes on in the morning and taking them off in the evening,
wiping their noses and bottoms and plates--acting both as nurse-maid
and dress-maid and cook and royal servant--what could we have to
contribute, after a day of this, to society at large? What about
after a week of this--or years?

Sometimes I feel like a fake listening to NPR. What does it matter if
I know about the state of the economy, or Barack Obama? Sure, it
matters since I am a citizen. But it is going to make my
son sit up and eat his carrots? Because then I would be interested.

I am interested, though--terribly interested. Which is the problem.
It would be easier to be so wholly confined to this private kingdom of
my home if I was not so interested in the outside world. I have
become curious about almost everything--physics, which I never paid
any attention to in high school or in college--biology, plants--my
goodness, how little I cared! How little I listened! I want to know
the names of the flowering plants in our over-grown yard, and the
trees and shrubs in our neighborhood. I am curious about the
neighborhood of birds that overlays ours, the hundreds of homes that
lay around and above our roof, and all the voices I hear in the
morning calling to each other--cajoling, mocking, annoyed. laughing.
inviting. I am so interested in what they are trying to accomplish
and communicate.

I know that it is out of the new stillness in myself that I have
become quiet enough to take interest in things like birds, and what a
baby means when it says hello without saying anything. These are the
things that have no place in the public square--babies, with their
drool and senseless babble. Birds, which tend to poop on our nice
cars, nest in our gutters and make themselves a general nuisance. Toddlers,
who are forever in the way and holding us up. I spent the first few
years of my time at home resenting that I was suddenly shut out of the
adult world, with the exception of watching BBC films and reading
novels. But even then, i felt more like a voyeur peaking in on
something that wasn't rightly mine, that I had no right to participate
in --than an actual participant. But suddenly, after six years at
this, I have discovered something: it is these small, things, these
shabby and overlooked and --to the world-trained eye--worthless
things--that are so full of brilliance.

Take, for example, the way my eight-month old baby looks at me
when I come in to get her in the
morning. She does not know words yet, but she speaks the most perfect
sentence of joy and fulfillment when I pick her up. Her eyes, her
whole face--her whole being becomes so bright with pleasure I am
caught in my tracks. Every time. More than once I have listened to
her grunting and complaining in her crib, and complaining myself about
my half-finished task, being interrupted, never having space or time
of my own... I march up the stairs, slowly--open
the door--and that look stops me dead in my tracks. I find myself a
five full minutes later smelling her sweet head, singing to her,
kissing her fat cheeks--when I remember I have a pot of soup on the
stove that has now boiled over, or one of the older kids is on the
potty, or my tea kettle is still whistling.

But this experience of seeing pure, unfiltered pleasure in the face
of a baby, is not something that translates easily as a thing of
value. It cannot be bottled and sold or marketed. It is not
interesting to bankers, investors, even pastors or lawyers or
teachers. It is a private communication, like a love letter, and,
like a love letter, loses its meaning when shared. Best kept private. As are toddlers, who don't know the difference between a personal question
and small-talk, and birds, who don't know when it is Saturday morning
and time to stop singing.

I wonder that now, after these six years, motherhood has become such a
joy to me.

communion of saints

February 11, 2010

The kids are asleep, or at least quiet for the moment. I am sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a bar of dark chocolate. It is my guilty pleasure, the nearest thing to an escape—when there are so many things I should be doing (like the mounds of dishes spilling out of the sink on to the counter and across the kitchen.) But instead I sit and write.

It is clear today, and very cold. A relief after yesterday, so windy the trees were shedding branches, and some giving up the fight entirely and laying down across the road in exaggerated surrender.

A piece of dirtied cloth, a rag of some sort—nearly transparent from use—flew down our lot and lodged itself in a tree in our backyard. Audrey spotted it this morning, asking me if daddy could get out his ladder, climb up and get the cloth down so she could use it in a skit that she and some of her friends are going to perform at minnows. She wants to tie the cloth around her, she told me, as a costume. It is, quite frankly, the dirtiest piece of torn-up cotton you have ever seen, and its origins I don’t want to begin to guess—my most tasteful guess is that someone used to to change the old on their car, left it outside and it blew away in the wind—but there could be other explanations…

But being four, Audrey couldn’t think of a single reason why it would be unsavory to climb up and take a dirty rag from a tree and parade around in it as a costume. And that is what frightens and bewilders and awes me about my children.

February is the hardest month of the year to be a Christian. Listening to advent music in February is bittersweet at best, and at times, downright painful. January is bad enough, but then you have all these excuses: post-Christmas blues, ate too much, paying too much for the gifts that were put on visas, the whole New Years thing. But February—here we are, supposed to be moving on in to spring, the marketers tell us—spring clothing out in the catalogs coming in our mailboxes, flowers in pots in the grocery store, and of course the proliferation of pink and red everywhere. But here we are, cold, perpetually cold. The earth is still dead and hard; there is not even a scent of spring in it. We feel so far from spring, and even farther from Christmas. Why is it that no one even talks about Christmas in February? It seems almost taboo —

O come, Emmanuel, rescue captive Israel… and we are still captive. We have not really made any progress since Christmas, have we? Here we all were: full of good intentions, gifts, parties, cards, saying our best and looking our best and being jolly and together and so very merry. We prayed and went to church and looked and waited and expected—and then Christmas came and went and here we are, still broken-hearted, still wanting our marriage to be better and our children to be better and there to be more money and less pain and no more cancer. If God is here, then why is life still so hard? This is an old question, I don’t pretend to be original. But it bothered me anew the other night: I had gone to play for a group of patients staying at a hotel-type home while receiving cancer treatments at the hospital. Most of them were far from home, some had family that had come with them and were staying there as well—and all were fighting some type of life-threatening cancer. I am always happy to bring my music in to those kinds of situations, because words are so small and cumbersome. They are too small to answer the big questions of “what next” and “what if,” and when employed as agents of comfort, they are ill-fitting and unwieldy at best, offensive at worst. And then I, being a creature of words, feel at a loss. Music, this other language we all share, fills that gap—though it is interesting how much it seems to be a forgotten language anymore.

As I stepped out of the warmth of the building to carry my things in from the car, I was struck by the cold, the distance of the tiny beady stars, and how hard it all seems. If we waited, and if God came, and is here, doesn’t it seem like things could be a little bit better? This earthquake in Haiti; these patients enduring the torture of chemo, hoping for a cure—

And I know all the usual answers, and most of the time they are enough, but this night, they were not enough. God is here, our comforter; he has taken our sorrows upon himself…is present with us. I want to see more of God here. I want to touch, and feel, and see with my eyes, so that if there is this overwhelming hope, I can honestly and with candor translate it to those who can’t see. Or maybe I am the one that needs God's obvious presence translated to me, as I am, at times, quite blind to it. I suppose that is why, in all wisdom, God gave us the communion of saints.

Memory

December 27, 2009


What will I remember of these days? These days that begin with tiny cold feet pawing me in bed, often waking up to the whole family piled in our bed, the kids talking to Evie, cajoling us to get out of bed and make them toast, etc. Will I remember my crusade to conserve maple syrup (I cringe to think of the amount of money I spend a year on pure maple syrup, whatever that means. Why can’t there be some happy medium between Aunt Jemima’s high fructose corn syrup and $20-a-quart maple syrup?)
Will I remember my striving to cheerfully keep rooms clean, keep clothes-toys-books-dust from literally burying us alive, like the terra cotta armies buried with royalty in China? I picture them sometime, frozen under layers of dust and sand. It would not take that long for us to be so buried, if we only stood still long enough. Sometimes, if I leave the house for the morning or afternoon, and return—being gone for, say, about three hours-- I think, upon returning, that we are already half there—half buried under our own debris. The funny thing is, the debris is all things we love—the kids art stuff, favorite toys they are playing with, in process of creating… it is our memory-taking gadgets, our camera and video camera—our cells, constantly being mis-placed and losing their tails, running out of batteries, wanting both to connect us to cross-coast loved ones, and to distract us from our present tasks. All these objects form the tiny particles of sand and dust that bury us, minute by minute, until at the end of the day I am digging us out, dusting the children off, bathing them…

I have digressed. The baby woke, nursed, then fell back (literally) in to a deep slumber. She is now making these little purring noises like a kitten; she is so, so sweet when she sleeps. She is getting in her second phase of baby hair, and it feels like duck down, all soft and fuzzy. She has that baby smell still, and likes to be close to you when she sleeps. With the first two, I loved them, heart-breakingly loved them, but it was so hard. I kept thinking, much of the time, about the paradox of so much love in the midst of hardship, and wondering what the parallels were to people who stay in abuse relationships. Here I was—so in love with this baby, but feeling so ill-used… both by the baby, and the situation… it sounds pathetic, but it sums up my emotional state for longer than I would like to admit. But…this baby is different. She is sweet, through and through. No ceaseless crying. She has brought so much joy to our family, and without the accompanying hardship and sorrow I felt with the first two.

Again, I digressed. The question at stake: how will I remember these days? And then…how will the kids remember them? A few things are certain, though not necessarily comforting: I will not remember everything. I will not remember the weary details, the feeling of monotony and uselessness. I will not remember the dust bunnies and dirty toilets, the uneaten food I throw out after dinner battles, and the unbelievable number of leaves that have been tracked through my hardwood floors this year. I will probably remember different things than I think. When I look back on our four years in Lynden, I most often remember the sun coming through our dining room windows, the kids making prism rainbows with the candlesticks—reading in the afternoon, while they were sleeping, with the sun and my blanket warming me, and a pot of tea and a bowl of trail mix keeping me company. Looking out at the peak of Mt Baker in the distance, and the green of our neighbor’s house and grass. Fearing that someone would knock on the door and interrupt my quiet. I will remember the kids in the backyard, the treehouse, playing on the apple tree, the kiddie pool, dahlias, garden-attempt. I will remember putting in our patio, how we lovingly tried to make that house perfect, as if we would always stay there—the wood stove (that the new owners promptly removed!) the basement remodel with expensive carpet… I could go on. We were freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer, but it was a sweet house, like first love… just suited for us. And we were ready to move on when it was time to go… for the most part.

Will I remember, from this year, my morning times with Audrey? Monday Minnow, Tuesday baking, Wed Bible Study, Thursday home school and laundry, Friday fluff and buff the house? My conflicting emotions about keeping Audrey out of preschool this year—enjoying the extra year with her, worrying that I am not doing enough to make her environment rich, etc… purchasing flashcards, etc… and not staying at it like I should. What will I think of all this in ten years—or will I?



When I go in to tuck the kids in at night, they are so angelically beautiful sleeping. They hardly look real; it is almost painful to look at them, they are so lovely… and so unlike their waking selves. Not that they aren’t beautiful awake; they are just so rarely quiet, and never have that far-away wistful look they have when sleeping. But when I close my eyes and lean in to tuck Hudson in to sleep, and put my nose to the top of his head, burying it in his hair, it is still the same as when he was a baby. I used to quiet him to sleep that way, as a fussy baby—breath on his head, slowly, willing myself to relax and pass it on to him—I read it in a baby book, and was annoyed that it sounded so easy –but over time, it worked… at least I remember it working. There’s the question of memory again.

My children are so tangible—I hold and carry and hug and move them a hundred times a day. We have more verbal and non-verbal communication in a day than I have with most other people I love in a week. With all the immediacy of our interactions it is impossible for me to imagine my life with them in a more distant role—say, as a teenager, or, an adult. What will I become in that process? Who will they become?

Almost Christmas

Tuesday. 2:24 pm. The kids are napping, or at least making a good show of napping; the house is quiet (except for the purr of the washer). There is a bird singing outside in the cold sunshine. Birds in December, singing, make me feel very confused. It is almost Christmas! What is a bluebird doing singing, as if it is spring? I am not yet acclimated to the south.

I love Christmas; the whole thing. I love the tree--the fresh pine smell filling the house, the wonder of taking old ornaments out and sentimentalizing over them, and taking new ones out that were forgotten. I love the tradition of sweeping the house clean of old things, dusting, putting out fresh linens and greens. I love pulling nativity sets out of cardboard boxes that are soft and beginning to come apart at the edges from wear--the old shredded bits of newspaper that really need to be replaced, wrapped around each piece--all of it brings back a part of my childhood that sits very near the happiest part of my soul.

When I was pregnant with Evie this summer, and on bed rest, there were few things I could think on that would help me relax and go to sleep. If I thought about the present--the state of the house, how I was failing the kids by being so ghastly big and on bed rest, the state of my mind and emotions--none of these things were helpful. If I thought about the future--possibly having a preemie; what I was going to do with three... and bigger questions about job and vocation and happiness--that was not helpful either. But, if I closed my eyes and thought about my childhood, I could disappear to a place that was restful and happy.

Summers at our lake place, for example. The feeling of the ice-cold glacier water of Lake Tapps, and the warmth of the dock under your bare skin as climbed out, shivering. A sunset boat ride, wrapped in cast-off sweatshirts and beach towels. The feel of the wind coming so dangerously fast in your face, laying down on the front of the boat and feeling every wave pass under you. The feeling of complete trust, as I knew, no matter how dangerous it felt, that we were safe with my father driving.

And Christmas; there are so many aspects of my childhood Christmas that bring me a simple, deep contentment. The entire living room floor cris-crossed with lights, spending the entire afternoon determining which ones worked and which ones didn't. A tin of popcorn freshly opened for the occasion of decorating the tree. Finding mom's special angel ornaments; putting up the brown nativity scene with my oldest sister. I could go on.

The point: two-fold.
1. For children, there is meaning in even the most menial tradition that is repeated, year after year. Possibly this is the same for adults, but I know (from experience) it is even more so with children.
2. My happy childhood was a blessing... but also a curse. I want to give my children the same sort of childhood that I have... and I do not if, as a parent, I am up to it. I have a temper; I am impatient. My energy is limited, as well as our resources. Am I as happy, now, as I was then? Can the kids tell if I am faking it? And... with such a beautiful childhood, it is easy to become discontent when life now is less than prosaic. Not that I am craving European vacations and a nanny; but the ability to buy artisan cheeses, and have a weekly house-keeper would be nice.

How does this fit in with my annual resolution to be more content?

Oddly, I think the baby has helped in this respect. A year ago--certainly two years ago--I was still harboring this secret fantasy of returning to grad school, finishing a PhD and teaching somewhere. Maybe it was the advent of Kindergarten this year that also helped me realize my children are growing up. I remember a distinct moment in the doctor's office, when I had both older kids in for their yearly check-up--they were being measured against the wall, first one and then the other--and it hit me--we are making progress! They are growing; they are coming along. They are sitting still in the doctor's office; they are answering her questions on their own volition. They are hopping on one foot, taking eye tests, gaining weight and getting taller. Of course I knew this, because I witness these small gains every day. But standing back, seeing it all from a clinical perspective--I was impressed. And I felt like celebrating a bit. We have made progress! Even though half the time I am not sure I am doing the right thing, and the other half of the time I am sure I am doing the wrong thing, we are moving along.

And that baby...
sometimes I am afraid because I love that baby so much. I find she is so dear to me, I often do not like to use her name, but call her the baby, or her newest nickname, Evykins. She has this smile that stops your entire day, clears your mind and makes you say, after a minute or two, "what was I doing?" She is getting new hair now, a bit thicker and coarser, but still has this soft sweet head I love to rub and smell. She has the most lovely baby smell, still, even though she is nearly five months old. We all are in love with our baby; that is one of the truest statements you could make about our family right now. I worry, loving her this much, that something may happen to her. And if that were to happen, I do not know that I would survive it. I suppose I felt this way with the other kids, and still do, in some respect...but it is mingled now with parenting frustrations, attitude issues, etc. The baby is so good, and so sweet-tempered, it is hard to ever feel ill toward her, even when she screams her head off in the car seat because she is lonely, or insists on nursing all night and sleeping in the crook of my arm.

What will be left of me when I am done parenting? What will I have become? I can see, already, small changes, though I have not had the vantage-point experience with myself yet that I had with the children in the doctor's office last year. I cannot see, compared with who I was six years ago, what I have become. Small benchmarks of change, for better or worse: I hit the ground running the morning now. I am more productive in the evenings, practicing and cleaning and doing correspondence. I value quiet times in the afternoon in a way that would have been inexplicable to me before children. I am more compassionate, and slower to judge. I feel more guilt, on a daily basis, for things I have neglected to do or do poorly. I have more compassion when looking back on my younger self--especially my self as a young mom.

Beginnings

December 4, 2009

Survival of the Fittest

A word about the title of this project:

I have never understood the principle of survival of the fittest. It is not, in most cases, the most fit that survive. It is often those who happen to be in the Right Place at the Right Time, or those who have Determination or can plain Hang on the Longest. It is the hanging on the longest that in the long run proves most useful in motherhood, I believe. If I survive a day, it is not because I am in top-top shape (as a British woman so aptly labeled my baby at the airport this week –‘oh, she is just top-top!)
It is because, white-knuckled, I hung on until at the end of the day, I was the last one standing. Which is a bit how it feels when I turn the house upside down and shake the kids out of it like dry leaves from a tree in autumn, in to their beds and they finally settle in to sleep for the night.

It is Dec 4. Tomorrow is Thomas’ 30th birthday. I have a million things zipping around my brain like helium balloons with the ends cut off. I can’t nail down a single concrete thought, idea or project: put in the lasagna! Do the dishes! Must practice both the Debussy and Christmas carols, as well as Mozart (wait—that is more than two things!)

The kids are up for a brief and restless quiet time…and I have chosen to write.

I want to begin this blog for a few reasons: first of all, because every time I begin a writing project, I cannot find it again. Ever. I go back on the computer and it is mysteriously moved and Not To Be Located. I write in a journal or spiral notebook that is then promptly buried under catalogs and coupons. So, I am using this URL as a safe filing system; if I don’t remember the name of my blog and can’t find it one day, maybe someone could email it to me.

Also… I miss my family, and can’t possibly seem to keep up corresponding with everyone. I think of it when I am nursing, or in the shower, or on walks with the kids…but these are not good times to write or call. Often I am writing at those times; on the walls of the shower, on the surface of the lake—phrases that describe this stage of life, bits of poetry, sometimes whole paragraphs. Sometimes I write these down; most of the time I do not. The moment, so beautiful and perfect like a Dawn and Karo Syrup bubble (know that trick? It makes the best bubble mixture….) sits there in the air, so round and rainbowy and perfect…then it pops. And I can’t remember afterward what was so inspiring about a walk around the lake in late autumn with my two kids and the baby.

Which was what inspired this latest entry; yesterday, 65 degrees, a quick pack-up and out the door when the house is still a disaster so we can walk around the lake once before dinner. Let me clarify. The “lake” is really a small holding pond that we frequent; there is a blue heron there, a favorite of the kids’ to spot; a number of ducks (all, curiously, with the name “Mr. and Mrs. Mallard) and a bunch of sticks in the water that are frequently mistaken for turtles.

It was cool and crisp, barely sunny… a perfect near-winter day. The trees were nearly bare. There were some geese flying, as should always be the case in early winter. The kids were riding their bikes, happy and occupied, and I felt satisfied. This is not an emotion I have frequently, and I stopped for a moment to savor the feeling. My kids are growing; they are healthy. They fight, yes, and are strong-willed, and possibly I give in too much and yell too much and don’t make them tidy up their rooms enough, and negotiate when I should not and say no when I should not and pick fights over vegetables when their must be a happier way to do dinnertime—but, at that moment, I felt satisfied. Maybe it was the late afternoon sunlight, and my pleasure at being out in it after two weeks of rain (we had been in Seattle visiting family…) maybe it was the pleasure of having the baby snuggle her head in close to me, which felt like a gesture of affection, even though she is only four months. Partly, I think, my pleasure also came simply from being out in nature. I have always loved being out of doors, even more so if there are trees and sky, birds and some other types of wildlife. I have learned to see a holding pond as a body of water, even though being from the Northwest I would have scorned this type of puddle a few years ago. I have learned to pretend the traffic noise is the ocean in the background, or a waterfall just around the corner. Sure, the nature path is paved with asphalt, and there are plastic resting benches every few hundred feet. Still, the essence of nature is intact: there are trees, and they grow through the asphalt where they must. There is sky, and looking over the lake, you can actually see quite a bit of sky, which is unusual for this part of the country. There is wildlife—a blue heron, for instance, that stalks with the most incredible stealthiest across the water. All of it brought me a kind of pleasure that was hard to put in to words, but that made me, if even for a fleeting moment, perfectly content.

On Leaving Papa

Tuesday morning we ended a ten-day stay in Washington, visiting all the people we love. It is incredible to spend such a short time with all the people who you love and love you the most; it is wonderful and heart-wrenching and exhausting. Wonderful, because it feels so good to be loved, and it is a splendid thing to have family who is always interested in the very best for you. It feels as good as an old pair of slippers or a warm sweater on a cold day; protection and comfort and sustenance all at once. It is heart-wrenching because there is always that thought, getting on the plane going home… “what if I never seem them again?”

Which is what struck me with peculiar clarity this time as we were dragging suitcases in to SEA-TAC on Tuesday morning. My grandpa is 87 years old, but you would never guess it. He is as fit as any 70 year-old, thin and active and spry. He does exercises every morning, works out in the yard and around the house, and lives with Grandma right on the Puget Sound, in a house that can only be accessed by walking down 50 (steep) wooden steps to the front door. But… he is having health complications. Body not producing enough blood; red blood count down…medical terms I am not familiar with, inconclusive diagnoses. He does not seem as ill as he should, the doctors say…they are not concerned… or not as concerned as they should be…which is comforting, but not really.

My papa. Who stayed with us so often when my parents went on vacation. Who, with my grandma, came to every ballet recital, piano and harp recital, every birthday, Christmas, fourth of July. Who helped us make cars and bears and ornaments in his wood-shop, who was patient when we messed up his tools and did not clean up after ourselves Who took us on beach walks and showed us shells and glass and how to put a rock between clam shells to make a pet. My papa, who took me fishing for the first time—and celebrated my first catch, even though it was a bottom fish and hardly enough for one bite, my grandma fried it up for dinner—I don’t remember if I ate it or not. My papa, who loves my children now, who bought a ride-on horse for the great-grandkids, and turns the heat up when we stay there—even though it goes against all his life-long established principles. I don’t know what I would do if that was the last time I get to see him; in the midst of pulling out suitcases and carseats and backpacks and children, I did not even get to tell him a proper goodbye. Watching him drive away, I could not fight back the tears. How do people go on living in the midst of grief? When there is this person-shaped hole in your life, does it not just become a vacuum and suck all the rest of your living in to it? I felt an overwhelming sadness, and fear—I wanted to run back and say, wait—

But then what would I say? Don’t die?

I feel so much guilt in moving away, as if my moving away has sped their aging. But I know it has not. Living closer would not make their days longer; and I do not know how much longer they will have.

But as I walked in to the airport, I was sucked back in to the hectic flow of Living: had to check bags, had to pull things out and weigh and re-weigh suitcases; we were late hurry up! Use the potty empty juice-cups, take off hats/coats/shoes (everything but your underwear!) be scanned and put it back on again…gather things up, all in a row then march to the gate—

And suddenly I realized I had forgotten my reverie.

And that, I imagine, is how we survive. Life, with all its needs and demands, sweeps us up without pity or empathy, and somehow helps us recover ourselves. I needed the duty of security check to take my mind off the leaving, my sadness, guilt and desire to run back and halt time. I understand now that some (most?) things we feel most deeply cannot or should not be expressed with words. What an optimistic statement at the beginning of this experiment in expression…