I know spring is coming when the energy returns, the energy that has me scrubbing floors and singing at the top of my lungs, the energy that calls me to cook lamb and salmon and greens and asparagus and serve it on the best china for some of my favorite people.
I feel a rising. The sap is rising in the trees and something is rising in me too. I feel it in Quaker meeting when I sit and listen not only to the silence, but to the silence behind the silence and feel my whole heart swell from joy as I see the bird in the window and someone asks us to hold their pet dog in the light and Max lays his head in my lap and mouths these words, “Mama…I love you.”
This past year has been many things: It has been a learning experience. It has been quietly hard. It has been about being stuck, losing my way, losing my hope and losing people I love. It has been about a dismantling so subtle that I still don’t know how to talk about it.
But during Sunday dinners, when community is gathered around the table and wine is poured and the children are in a pile watching the hockey game down in the TV room and the roast potatoes are just about crisp enough to serve, all is right with the world. And I know nothing but love. This is what is has all come down to. This is all there is. And it is perfect.
Bring it on. After a long winter, I am ready.
It is starting to snow again. And while there is a part of me that is delighted, I am also a tiny bit afraid. There is nothing like big snow storms to remind us how fragile life really is.
The snow storm started on Friday afternoon. We were well stocked with food and milk and wood. We had plenty of movie and board games. We hoped that we would have Monday off from school. We planned fun things to do that were in walking distance of home, planned to leave the cars at home. We dreamed of being shut in.
When we woke on Saturday at 7am the outside had been transformed into a winter wonderland. I lit a fire, read, waited for Max to wake so I could make pancakes. We set out to do a shoveling pass of the driveway and front walkway when the noises began, the buzzy, echoey loud sounds of transformers popping. And then, by 9am the power was gone.
As I shoveled I felt the panic just under the surface percolate. The snow had just started. We had already a foot and it seemed to be falling even faster. There was suddenly nowhere to put the snow I kept clearing from the path. Suddenly, being inside felt like being trapped by the snow that fell faster and faster. We went in only to change wet clothes by the fire and we felt the temperature in the house drop. So I breathed. And I shoveled and I leaned into the wind. And then, when half our firewood was gone by 3pm we packed a backpack and set out to find friends with power.
We found them, half a mile away. Suddenly, together in the company of several families in front of a fire, the panic lifted. The growing darkness felt festive not frightening once more. For three days we huddled together, in shifting combinations, with several families in our tribe. We laughed and played games. We socialized and were still. We walked and carried firewood and cooked and read and sat in a line working on our laptops on the one remaining wireless connection. And as the lights came back on, we all drifted back home.
And now, as the snow starts to fall again, I feel it. That sense of dread that could mean that it might all fall apart again. I feel the fear that arises from the possibility that we could be stuck, trapped, walled in with snow. And I can’t imagine how it felt in the ancient days when winter snow and ice meant darkness, quiet, stillness for days, weeks, even months on end.
The gift of storms like these is the discovery of the meaning of yin. Quiet and internal and solitary…and sometimes paralyzingly fearful. Our society has no space for such a still way of being. We keep the lights burning, we connect in thousands of different ways. We watch the storms on radar as they pass above us. But how can we gain courage without moments such as these?
The gift of the storm is a chance, even in this modern go-go society to touch the deep unknowing that comes when you are alone, in the snow wondering where you should go. The gift of that deep unknowing is the chance to touch the trust that arises when we allow ourselves to be so still. The kind of trust that allows you to set off, on foot, through 20 inches knowing you will find home again.
This week I was cruising through my chores. My trip to Madrid had put me behind. I had so much to do. Several weeks worth of laundry had piled up and I had no work clothes. Max was running out of socks. In a burst of efficiency, I threw a load in and went up to make dinner. After homework and bath and bedtime I went down to move the clean clothes to the dryer. I put them in, turned the dial, hit the button…and then nothing. The dryer coughed a little. Strained a bit. But it would not spin. Incedulous, I tried again. And again. I checked plugs and connections and then, exhausted I gave up. A good nights sleep would do me well. I thought the same would be true for my dryer.
The next morning I was peppy. By the dryer still made the same cough. Still whined before growing silent.
We are on a very tight budget. I have practically no cushion for moments such as these. And sure enough, when I checked, other emergencies which had come earlier had eaten what little was left. I could not pay to have someone come and fix my dryer. Not now. It would have to wait.
This was not such a crisis. I delight in line dried clothes. They can be stiff perhaps but there is nothing like the smell of the outdoors, of the crisp air, on my shirts, my pajamas, my pillowcases. When Juan and I went to Mexico, I handwashed and line dried everything I brought with me on my last day and then rationed those clothes for months–breathing in the scent of a place I loved so much, a scent that did not come from mechanical dryers but from clothes hanging, swaying and drying in the Oaxacan breeze. I returned home from every trip with the intention of hanging a clothes line but each time convenience and lack of time got in my way.
This morning, as my anxious mind worried over bills, and dirty clothes and the impossibility of having time to wait for a repairman even if I could scrape together the cash, the simplest of solutions jumped to my brain. $10 for clothesline and clothes pins, sunshine and winter breezes, a reduced gas and electric bill, and sunshine infused clothes.
I recently read that Universe is always doing its best with what it has at its disposal. Always trying to arrange the moments, no matter how chaotic and sad and tragic for the best possible outcome. I could stomp my feet at our bad luck or I could hang a clothes line and delight in sundried clothes.
I chose the later.
What crazy, horrible, inconveniences have lead you to a place you always wanted to go? This wide eyed dreamer is searching and would love to hear your stories.
Two weeks ago, in the very moments that one dear friend lay dying, the most extraordinary thing occurred.
My phone rang. And I said hello.
On the end, from an airport city very far away, was an old friend, an old love, the one who had held my hand as I passed from innocence to knowing. It had been over 20 years since I last heard his voice which now sounded both familiar and strange. We talked light heartedly as I drove toward home, catching up on the basics of life, until his flight was called, until I pulled up at a neighbors to pick up Max. We would talk again we promised. I felt a circle drawn complete in the sweetest of ways.
I picked up Max. I talked to Jackie. I went to the grocery store. I came home and checked email. And then, only then, I learned that my friend Jenni had died, ending at long last her long painful struggle with cancer. As I wrote down time she had passed away for my journal, I did the math and realized that as I was saying a hello to one I thought I would never talk to again, another I held dear was saying goodbye forever.
And I held that simple fact in my heart. For days, I held it.
*******
This fall I have been learning about letting go. I have been mourning my friend Jen for so long, but I have been working through other changes as well. I have been letting go of old habits, letting go of my favorite defenses, letting go of my most cherished stories. Our foundation has been wobbly as the cornerstones of our life have been, one by one, shifting, transitioning, creating space. Its been hard, scary, at times heartbreaking to see things I loved so much dismantled. As we have managed the bumps and the inevitable fear, I have carried around a mustard seed, convincing myself that I only needed a tiny bit of faith. Stumble forward onward onward–a path would appear that would make it all make sense.
One day, I asked my soulsister Kaiya, “What ever happened to the burning bush? It would be very convenient to see one, you know, with a booming voice and everything. It would be lovely for that voice to let us in on the plan. I am all about the small and subtle, don’t get me wrong, but these days I am feeling so dense and tired and lacking in faith that I would like someone to please let me know what this is all about through something as concrete as a burning bush. It would be a great comfort.”
*******
I don’t think that phone call was a burning bush. But I do think it was a bell. A bell telling me that there is no such thing as goodbye. No such thing as forever.
Nothing is ever really lost. No matter how far away, no matter how long past, no matter how faded-it is there, tranformed perhaps, but accessible in some way, at the end of a ring, a simple as saying hello.
Take care of each others children.
Walk each others dogs.
Feed each other. Regularly.
Make bread, make soup, make cookies. Leave care packages on door steps.Cook together.
Pray together. Even when, especially when, our prayers are not the same.
Light candles.
Sing.
Dance.
Laugh.
Search for buried treasure.
Go to parties.
Step in with a helping hand at the moment it is needed.
Know when to hold space and do nothing more.
Share good fortune, surprises and exciting adventures.
Visit each other’s past.
Venture into the woods together.
Stay through the rain together.
Make art. Make music.
Tear down walls and defy boundaries.
Play games.
Watch each other blossom.
Take big risks with the heart. Cry if needed. Its ok, really.
Retreat if you need to, but leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way home.
Expect nothing but receive joyfully and completely.
Is it possible to drown in love?
For two and a half hours I have been sitting here, perfectly still, wondering. Because I don’t know how else I can explain that I am moved to the point of not being able to move.
************
Two weeks or so ago, I was walking with my friend Stephen down the street. “How is your brother?”, he asked me. “I don’t know” I said, looking down. “I don’t really talk to him these days. In fact,” I said looking up at the sky, “I haven’t really seen him in a year and a half.” My brother is a policeman and he lives far away in a big big city. I come through town only now and again. Its so hard to drive so far with a small child. Its so hard, as a single mom, with a life so full, to get away. The few times I have made it through in the last year and a half, he has been working. He made an arrest. He was sleeping at the precinct. Or he was out of town. Its hard for a policeman in a hardened city, with a life so full to get away.
*************
But then, suddenly, he was here. Walking through the door at my friend’s house in Silver Spring. Surprising me at a party his wife had planned from 300 miles away. Suddenly I was dancing with him like we did when we were teens, while Jeff, Jamie and Randy played music. Everything that is sweet about my childhood met everything that is sweet about my grownup life. I swung my gorgeous nephew around and around to the sounds of homemade music played in a living room and laughed and laughed.
I danced and danced with my dad, with my cousins, with my neighbors, with my kindergarden best friend, with Odette, my past, my present and the future all colliding into one perfect now.
**************
I don’t know how she found them all. My sister-in-law. A detective’s wife. But she found my work friends, my friends from the neighborhood, my soulsisters, friends flung far and wide. Friends she had only heard about in passing. She caught their names as I spun my tales and tucked them in her heart. And she is sitting on a bar stool with her son sleeping on her lap. And I love you just doesn’t seem to be enough.
**************
Erica and Eileen drove me home. Max would stay at the hotel with his cousins. He is squeezing every last bit of love out of their visit as he can. I still couldn’t believe my eyes-couldn’t that they were here in my living room–these loved ones of mine who live so far away. “By the time it really sinks in that you are here you will be gone” I said mournfully. I look at them with relish. I drink them in while I can.
***************
I wonder if maybe I can put some of this love in tupperwear and freeze it, pull it out like soup on a cold and rainy day. If I could, then maybe I could sleep.
****************
I am having to rework so many stories tonight. The thing about surprise parties is that they surprise you. And the party is only the first surprise.
On Thursday night I went out to hear live music. I have wanted to see Yo La Tengo live for years. I promised myself I would do it before I turned 40. I managed the task with just hours to spare.
After a great show, I was driving home with my friend. I suddenly looked at the clock as my chest started to tighten. It was 11:15. “Forty-five minutes” I said.
“Until what?” he asked.
I looked at him incredulously. “Until I turn 40.” This was so huge to me, so big. I could not believe that someone so close to me had not noticed.
The trip home was excruciating. I hadn’t hired a babysitter. My ex was at home with Max and I knew that I would face him as the clock struck midnight. Worse yet, when he left I would face the absence of him.
The last ten years were pressing in on me with each passing minute. I got home, kicked out Juan with a thanks and a wave, and sat down with 10 minutes left.
I turned 30 without much flourish, drama or even thought. I was a work-aholic then. I was on a business trip. I came home to a sweet, but rather uneventful weekend with my husband. Turning 30 meant being a grown up and I was ready to embrace responsibility and stability.
Over the next ten years, I was swept along, along a career path, a partnership, and eventually into motherhood. I struggled with post-partum depression. I grew as a mother, I watched my marriage fall apart, I came to peace with work, I learned to be alone, I developed a community, I lost my faith and gained it over and over again. I found my heart, I found my soul, I gave up faking it and embraced my messy but authentic self, stopped looking for the ending and just immersed myself in the adventure.
And at 11:50, I sat alone as I felt myself standing at some kind of doorway, gateway, a new beginning or maybe just a continuation of the same old road. It felt heavy and strange and bigger than normal.
I was glad Juan left. I needed to face this myself. Even more than that, I needed him not to be there. Yet, to be honest, I felt as lonely as I did the first night that Juan walked out of my house. I cried. Not because I was turning 40. I cried for grief, and joy, for all that had passed over the last 10 years. Then I blessed those memories and blew them like kisses out the window.
Eventually I slept. And then I woke up. And it was a new day.
My 40th birthday fell on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It was also the 18th day of the month. In Hebrew, the word for Chai or “Life” and the word for the number 18 are the same. When the new year falls on the 18th, she told me, it is especially lucky. For me to turn 40 on such a day…is triply lucky. A blessing of the most wonderful kind.
And so, it was perfectly appropriate that I would spend my 40th birthday, gathered around the table with dear friends, passing the challah and dipping apples into honey. Instead of blowing out birthday candles, I would light them.
-
Barukh atah Adonai E1oheinu, melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat
Blessed are you, Lord God, who brings Light into the World, into the Universe.
Never have those words meant more to me. As I lit the candles I understood. All the generations before seemed to touch me on my shoulder. Bring the light into the house. Bring the light into the world.
I cannot help but believe that I am standing at at the foot of a mountain range, both magical and magnificent. There is no other way to go but walk, step forward, trust my life, trust the path.
Let it carry me home. To the light.
Saturday was the “end of summer” camp out at the pool. Max had been waiting for this moment all summer long. The thought of swimming in the pool until midnight tickled him, the thought of not having to leave his precious pool when the day was done. Though we woke up to a sky full of grey clouds, as we ran our errands the sky started to clear, the sun peaked out, then finally burst out in full hot humid August glory. A perfect night for sleeping poolside. We breathed a sigh of relief.
As the day turned to evening though, as I lounged at the pool, it suddenly felt cool. At first it was a welcome relief from the August heat but then it started to warn of a change in the weather. I looked at my neighbor lounging next to me. “It will blow over” I said. He nodded solemnly. We checked the doppler map on my iphone just to be sure. We saw the storm coming straight at us. “It will blow over” we said nervously, already feeling the crushing weight of the children’s disappointment looming. “Let’s stay”
As we started to cook dinner we felt it, the few drops of rain. “It must be from the trees” we speculated. The lifeguards kept the pool open. No thunder, no lightening, its fine. Too early to call it a night. “We could always go home” we rationalized. “But not now, let’s stay. Its bound to blow over.”
A few hours later we were huddled in the gazebo. A few families had left not wanting to set up their tents in the lashing rain. The rest of us shared food and drinks and told stories and laughed while the kids slid down the hill in the mud and rolled around like little pigs, jumping into the pool when the life guards deemed that the rain was not too heavy. “It will blow over” I laughed over my wine. “Maybe not until tomorrow but it will eventually. It always does.” When it slowed down enough to start the campfire we wiped off chairs and huddled around the warmth, breathing in the magic and saying, “Yes…we knew it would blow over.”
It was after midnight that a showered and exhausted Max was tucked into his sleeping bag, snuggled up against a night totally unexpected, but thrilling never the less. I whispered to him the only mama wisdom that seemed to matter at that moment.
“We should never be afraid of the storms. They carry us to places we never would have journeyed, if only we are brave enough to stay.”
Sneak out of work early, but not too early. Even though you just got home from vacation. Even though its the middle of the week.
Drive out to where the river meets the bay, where boundaries between fresh and salt water are not so hard and fast.
Put on a bathing suit and wade into the dark murky water, full of silt and lettuce-edged seaweed, holding the hand of the one boy who always makes your heart sing. Whisper that there are no water snakes here.
Wade out waist deep and crouch a little so the warm brackish water comes up chest high. Float around a bit and chat. With the boy, with his friend, with the man who has brought you here.
Dig with your toes in the velvety silt. Dig as you walk and float. Feel with your feet as you move along the bottom until you find it, a clam…then two, three, many more.
Keeping your toes on the clam, hold your breath and dive into the silty water. You won’t be able to see the treasure on the bottom. But maybe you can grab it. Deposit it in the blue bucket.
Later, after a picnic dinner, when the boys have gone to throw the clams back into the Bay, when the women have gone in to clean up after dinnner I was all alone in the moonlight. I stripped off the suit I wear, and dove back under water. There I found joy and peace and quiet in swimming alone, in feeling the water carry me like a little child. This is how I squeeze the last juice out of the summer days.
The summer is waning. Even though this is the 40th time I have experienced it, I am shocked now, surprised how quickly the days grow dark now. This time last year, I sat in a similar space, resisting the coming autumn, reluctant to allow summer to pass. “Please, stay another day,” I begged August, but September came and with it blessings, lessons, a winter of quiet and growth and peace, an unfolding and a relearning and a return of the spring. It comes and it goes. With luck I will return to summer’s shores again but only after having seen a new world. Each summer is entirely new.
And this one is not yet gone, though the slipping away is palpable.
I wander out in the waves of a new year, hold the hands of those who make my heart sing. I cannot see the bottom, cannot see if there are prizes, or monsters or anything else here. I do not know what we will find, or what will happen when we take the next step. There may in fact be water snakes here. We don’t know. But I feel the solid earth and I know if I walk and dig we will find treasure. This keeps me walking even when the birds will leave. This keeps me walking even when the flowers die back. This keeps me walking.
Every mid-June as the days swell, our little town here is blessed with the SilverDocs Film Festival. Sponsored by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel, it is an eight day exploration and celebration of documentary films.
Last night I had the good fortune of scoring a ticket to a talk given by the legendary Albert Maysles at a symposium that honored him.
Mr Maysles films are beautiful. Last year at this time, when I was feeling so dark and dreary, I went to a midnight showing of Gimme Shelter and began to feel lifted, transformed. Grey Gardensanother one of his films is a tender portrait which clutches my heart.
As I sat in the darkened theater, Mr Maysles was charming and sat chatting with the humility of a great uncle in the kitchen. And he uttered words that resonated at a frequency that tapped right into all that I have been learning this year, a perfect finish to a wild roller coaster ride that started 12 months ago.
“Everyone just wants to be seen” I heard him say. His words washed over me. I am paraphrasing here for I am not sure I have them quite right but the gist of what he said was this: We all need to be seen and loved for who we are. That the whole point is the loving. That in and through this great, compassionate, loving gaze we can finally come to know and understand one another. We long to be seen, exactly as we are–and to be loved that way. Broken and wounded, when seen through the eyes of love we can be whole and perfect. That the greatest shame of our society is that we learn to live with our hearts hidden and locked, not daring reveal our inner thoughts and feelings, when in fact to reveal our secrets and be loved–that is the point.
In snippets spilled out casually in humble answers to an interviewers questions, Mr Maysles summarized the whole of what this last year has been about for me–what I have learned through the crazy twists and turns, through the ups and the downs. Yes…I silently prayed in thanksgiving for his words…Yes, me too…this is what I have come to believe.
We all desperately need to be seen, exactly as we are, through the lens of great love and compassion. We crave it–it is indeed what heals. This belief which has become unearthed in my own heart, this belief is what is compelling me forward these days. It is that which is calling me on this next leg of my journey.
Tomorrow is the summer solstice. The light will be at its greatest and I have to admit, it is as though so much of what we have dreamed of seems to be slowly coming true. Without telling stories before their time, I can only say that for very special people in my little tribe marvelous and magical things seem to be coming to fruition after a long dark winter when the dream of them seemed simply impossible. I too am feeling shifts in my own journey, as though I am coming into a clearing which is bright and where suddenly I can see the path. Midsummer at its most magical.
I wish you a tomorrow swollen with abundance and with the joy of being seen–exactly as you are–with great reverence and love.
