On Friday, I took Max and a friend to go see the Washington Capitals practice at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. I thought it would be an opportunity for him to see his heros up close and personal. I thought it would be a chance for me to see how fast those boys really can skate, something that never fails to amaze me.
The best moment of the morning came when Alex Ovechkin, (for you non-hockey fans he is the star player on the Caps and in many circles thought to be the best player currently in the NHL) fell down. He wasn’t doing anything all that hard (for him at least). He wasn’t even going all that fast. He was just skating, maybe thinking of something else, and he tumbled. He lay there on the ice for a few seconds and then started to giggle. Then he got up and dusted himself off and started to skate again.
The moments when we witness our heros doing something amazing are indeed breathtaking–the unbelievable goal, the leaping of a star center fielder, the slam dunk that hangs in mid air for what seems like minutes or for that matter the perfectly played song, the crowd rousing speech, the essay that makes you cry. But if you ask me, Alex’s little tumble there, was a mama’s wish come true, as magical a moment as ever there was. I was able to look Max in the eyes and say, “See that…We all fall down. Even Ove falls. And then he gets up and keeps skating.” That fall meant more to both of us, than all of the Great Eight’s goals put together.
Sometimes it is so easy, for Max, oh shoot, for me to believe that we are the only ones who stumble. And not just on the ice. It is so easy to believe that I am the only one who loses her patience or her train of thought or can’t keep the house organized. It is so easy to believe that I am the only one who has been playing guitar for over a year and still can’t play the F chord, or for that matter strum the easy chords cleanly.
Lately, the house and the guitar and the inability to form a coherent sentence are not the things that make me feels so alone. No–its other things. Its been the fact that my life feels every bit like it is on the verge of breaking open but some days just feels stuck and unmagical and impossible to move through. Its been the fact that while I am embracing the stillness and silence of winter with awe, I sometimes find myself unable to settle. Its been the fact that while I am mostly hooting and hollerin’ while I run the rapids of my life, I sometimes still break into a complete panic and even worse feel stuck, paralyzed and just so damn lonely. And at those moments it is so easy to just sit down, stop, give up and say, “Why bother”. To gracefully admit defeat. To compromise and tell myself its OK that we all fail. Do I really need to live this way? Can’t I just go to sleep, wrap a blanket around my tired body and throw in the proverbial towel.
But then, there are moments like Ove’s moment. The moment where the only thing left to do is giggle, roll over, dust off and get back on my feet.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about what it takes, what it costs, to live authentically. I think it costs a lot. Not in the way some might believe–the funny looks, the fewer resources, the people who think I am strange. Sometimes, it is so damn exhausting to put my heart out there all the time, to keep chosing to stay awake, to stay with my fear, my loneliness and my joy.
And yet I don’t know what other choice there is to make, what other place there is to go but here, this wide open place. With every breath, even when I am tired, even when it seems impossible I need to choose to get up again, keep skating.
As the holidays fade and we get back into the rhythm of every day life, my wish for you is the strength to choose to live however authentic looks to you. And whether you giggle or cry when you fall may you choose to get back up.
Today this parable, a teacher once told, keeps running through my head…I looked for her book so that I could quote it verbatim as she tells it but I can’t find it and so I will parphrase it here. Truth is its an old old tale. Told thousands and millions of times before.
A farmer has one horse to help him do the work on his farm. One day his horse runs away. All the neighbors come by to commiserate…They weep and say to him, “What horrible misfortune…”
The farmer says, “maybe…”
A few days later the man’s horse returns. But the horse does not return alone. His brings with him a whole pack of wild horses who settle on the man’s land and become his. All the neighbors come by to celebrate…They laugh and cheer and say “What great fortune you have…”
The farmer says, “maybe…”
A few days later, the farmer’s only son is thrown from the back of one of the horses he is trying to tame. He breaks his legs and is unable to walk, confined to bed and greatly ill. The neighbors come by to commiserate…They weep with the man and say, “What a terrible misfortune…”
The farmer says, “maybe…”
The next day the army comes through the village. The round up all the young men who are able to fight and conscript them as the country has just been invaded and all able men are needed to do battle. Because the farmer’s son has two broken legs, he is left behind in the care of his father. The neighbors come by to celebrate…They rejoice with the farmer and say, “What a marvelous fortune…”
The farmer says, “maybe…”
At our house we have been trying to make sense of an autumn where life has really not gone how we planned. Opportunities that we thought were blessings, turned complicated but have somehow righted themselves again.. Diagnoses that we thought were horrible led to successful surgeries and now a long descent into unknowing. Fairytale endings morphed into the beginnings of nightmares which give way to relief. Things changing, constantly changing and only being exactly what they are …right then…right there.
Tonight I sit stunned…hearing in the span of just several hours a rollercoaster of a tale. Last night, a dear friend’s child was shot in the chest. Last night he had a 1% chance of survival. And now…he is conscious, writing notes, squeezing his mother’s hand. But they do not know. We never know. It is what it is what is…
As my heart learns to ride this rollercoaster I have stopped trying to anticipate what comes next. My stomach will still drop when we hit those valleys. I will still laugh like a wildwoman at the top. The fear of what comes next does not tamper the grief. Experiencing the grief does not prevent the uplifting joy. Being numb changes none of it.
Over and over again it seems the universe is whispering this tale “Girl…you only have the need for two words…now…and this simple word which encompasses the whole of possibility: Maybe.
Maybe Sorrow.
Maybe Joy.
Maybe up and down.
Maybe Heartbreak with a side of Love. Maybe Love with a side of Heartbreak. Maybe both mixed up in a stew.
Maybe new. Maybe not.
Maybe.
Buck up, bear down, dig in and wait it out.
Find the silver lining.
Shift perspective-see the lesson–trust the reason.
Hold it all lightly. Claim its all interesting.
Say it is living
Know that it is dying.
Slam the door. Shout at the moon.
Kick and scream and don’t go easy.
Cry. Flail. Blame. Plead.
Dance. Sing. Weep. Laugh.
Build walls. Tear them down.
Sweep up dirt. Air out laundry.
Notice. See. Listen. Question.
None of this changes anything. Nothing changes anything but the passing of time.
And even time makes no promises.
I used to think that if I got it right, if I learned my lessons, if I bore my lot with dignity that I would be rewarded. Rewarded with rest.
I used to think that if I slayed the gremlins, if I journeyed bravely, if I kept up in the storms that I would find the Holy Grail and would be rewarded. Rewarded with some peace.
I used to think that if I somehow figured it out, that if I unlocked the mystery, that if I mastered the game there would be a magic transformation and all would be easier, simpler, picture perfect
Yet, it seems that the reward is really practice.
Practice in order to buck up, bear down, dig in and wait it out….
again and again and again.
It is raining now. A steady cold autumn rain. The kind that spoils camping trips and calls for hot tea and warm blankets and stacks of movies. Max is sick and has a sinus infection on top of an ear infection on top of something dreary and medieval sounding called Hand Food and Mouth disease. We are burrowing in.
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A few weeks ago I had a dream. I don’t remember much about it. It was fuzzy, almost impressionistic–blurry and not clear. The only thing I remember from this dream is staring out a window watching the rain, remarking “The women who have loved me are dying…” At the time I had the dream, I viewed it as a Jungian metaphor. I thought that at this time of great transition, I was letting go of all the various parts of me who had served me before, who had done their best to protect my tender heart but who now had seen their time end: The me who was afraid to love too deeply, the me who felt she had to do everything perfectly and be perfectly nice so that she would be adored, the me who felt she needed to plan out and control her life. Yes…I thought. These versions of me, they are dying and from their ashes a strong, secure, adventurous woman who is not afraid to love fearlessly is starting to rise.
**************
Our dear housemate Odette has been in the hospital for almost 3 weeks now. She is not dying but she is struggling to heal from a life changing surgery. She has been in and out of the hospital and holed up in her bed since labor day. I realize how much of our day-to-day life, functioning and running smoothly, has been made possible because of Odette’s quiet presence. In my efforts to keep our life together with her gone I am running at double speed, flailing around and unable to go and visit. I miss her and feel her slipping away. I feel a hole in my heart where her lilting African singing used to be.
************
My dear friend Jenni is so ill and in so much pain. She had pinned her hopes on a surgery that was not successful. I am angry and sad because I don’t know how to get halfway across the world to hold her hand. I want to sit on a beach with her and wrap my arms around her and I feel that if I could something just might shift for both of us. I am not sure what I can do anymore that will make a difference.
*************
This week I learned that my dear Jill, a friend who held me through the early days of my divorce with Juan, has cancer. We don’t know any details yet. There are tests, there are possibilities, there is lots of unknowing. I am sitting on the edge of her wide circle and wondering what if anything I can do to help. Thursday I learned that Antonieta, Max’s babysitter and third grandmother, my second mother, the woman who has been my steady day to day presence for four years through the worst of our separation, the one who wiped so many tears, the one who put cold cloths on my migraine ravaged head, the one who took my child when I needed to cry, I learned that she has an aggressive form of cancer. She has no health insurance. We don’t know what is next.
*************
“The women who have loved me are dying.” Suddenly this dream I had takes on a new scary meaning and as I stare out the window and watch the world turn impressionistic and blurry through the rain I wonder what it means.
*************
I am bowing to life exactly as it is. Its a minute by minute– no, more like breath to breath– exercise, this not wishing it was otherwise. Not wishing that it wasn’t raining…not wishing that we were camping…not wishing that Max felt well…not wishing we could be with other people…not wishing that Odette, Jenni, Jill, and Antonieta were well and sitting around my kitchen table sharing a bottle of wine and laughing with me right now…not wishing that I didn’t just eat an entire box of chocolates to dull the sting around my heart…not wishing that I was already an acupuncturist so that I could do something to help…why can’t I do anything to help?
It is raining, we aren’t camping, Max feels crummy and we can’t be around people lest we pass along the horrible virus that has left him with sores on his hands, feet and mouth. Most importantly many of the women who have loved me so well are sick and I don’t know what to do about it except eat a box of chocolate–so much so that now I can’t sleep. I don’t have needles to help them and I am years off from being able to and I feel so damn helpless in the face of this all. Wishing wouldn’t change any of this.
I frantically text my community and beg them to bring movies so I can distract myself this night. As though they are all in cahoots with the universe, they have set their phones aside so late, forcing me to sit here on the front steps, watching the rain and breathing through my grief.
**************
This is life, as it is.
This is the rain, cold and wet.
These are my tears warm and salty.
This is life.
Thanks to sweet Jen Lemen. Ain’t it the truth…
I rose this morning after hours of not sleeping. I lay in the dark in silent meditation. In peace.
Long hours of silence have a way of settling my heart now. They used to rattle me but I am no longer fearful of looking into the dark parts of my heart and seeing all the ways I am messy, and flawed and unkind and selfish. If I can stay long enough with these pieces of myself I learn something true. Something that lets me stop beating myself up and instead find the wounded part of my heart and kiss it and put a bandage on it.
I have been having a hard time with people who need me. I am unable to embrace their neediness, unable to reach out with compassion and dive in fearlessly. Instead I conserve my resources and hold it all close and give what I can, but not too much, and with a forced smile, sometimes. I leave as soon as I can and retreat back to my place not wanting to give too much away. I am tired.
Truth be told, I don’t like that smallish, tired, exasperated person much. Its not who I think I am, or rather who I think I want to be. I want to be selfless, and giving, and most excellent in my generosity. The smallish me who resents being asked to help who stomps her feet doesn’t feel like me at all.
In the hustle and bustle of the day I can punish that person when she shows up. I fuss at her and tell her to get over herself and resent her resentfulness because of what it does to my image of the me I want to be. But in the quiet of the night, in the meditative space between dreaming and wakefulness I can just sit with her and sometimes when I am listening with a quiet quiet heart she tells me things I know are true.
Those who are needy, who ask for help so fearlessly, who expect it to come so freely can make me uncomfortable sometimes because they highlight just how hard it is for me to ask for help myself. I so rarely let it all fall apart. I so rarely say I can’t do it alone. I so rarely cry uncle and just let my needs be taken care of like a newborn baby. I am scared to be that needy. But I know that when I break through and whisper the word help there are hands there to catch me, hold me, pull me up. To throw their arms around me and stroke my hair, to wipe away my tears and type me love notes.
What do you learn when you allow yourself to be sit silently with your least favorite version of yourself?
Originally posted Sept 27, 2007
Tonight it rained. I sat in wonder and listened to the sound of the rain against my windows. I stood out on the front steps and let me feet get damp. It has been such a dry summer. The rain smelled miraculous and hopeful, the harbinger of good things. Life giving and cleansing. Just what we needed.
Nighttime in Rio, just after the storm passed
I have thought alot about my trip to Rio –the one I took two Octobers ago. We took this photo our first night there. Eddie’s friend, an ex-pat who had settled in this magical city, had taken us for a walking tour and showed us his favorite spot, a park across a lake from the hustle and bustle of this city. A rainstorm rolled in suddenly, unexpectedly, catching us on the wrong side of the park. It fell in sheets soaking us all as we ran for cover under some trees, laughing. I laughed harder than I had in months. At that moment, laughter bubbled up unexpectedly, as unstoppable as the rain. It was so absurd and silly and joyful. We were dressed to the nines for a night out on the town, with water running down our noses, with my chic outfit dripping and misshapen, my “oh-so-Rio” sandals squishing and making ridiculous noises. It was the funniest thing ever to be in Rio in the warm rain. I jumped in a puddle and lost my shoe. Pretty soon we were all laughing because I couldn’t stop laughing
I had felt so heavy and stressed when I got to Brazil. I was at the height of my financial panic and I had just started to wrap my heart around the idea that Juan was not coming back. I arrived at the airport after flying all night with only $20 American and a three day training to run in Spanish. I went to the cash machine at the airport to take out money for taxi fare and found my account was overdrawn. My cell phone was out of batteries. I had forgotten my credit card at home. I had no idea what I would do next. I went up to the money exchange counter and cashed in my $20. I hoped it would be enough to get me to the hotel where I could regroup and figure out my next move. I thought I had hit rock bottom. I felt so alone, like such a failure. To keep myself from breaking down in this strange city, I repeated a mantra “It is going to work out all right” and then I added a fervent “please” and threw in a prayer for good measure.
The taxi fare was exactly what I had in my wallet.
I got to the hotel and they told me my room was already paid for. I slept a heavy deep dreamless sleep. I woke up to find lunch. A a friend of a friend living in Sao Paolo who had come to meet me. A fully charged cell phone and a Dad on the other end able to wire some cash to get me through the week. And best of all when Eddie arrived that evening he had two airplane tickets to Rio.
Four days later I was standing in the rain in Rio, laughing as the water poured over my toes and ran down my fingers. I remember thinking that the rain washed some of my grief away that night, just let it slip right away and run into this lake, leaving me feeling a tiny bit lighter and ready to start healing.
Hearts are funny things.
They carry in their memory, the echo, the footprint of every kiss, every caress, every sorrow, every hurt. Hearts remember like elephants–they remember blissful freefalls and hard impacts. Each of these memories lives in the tissue, wordlessly. There is no language but the muscle memory is clear and rises up through our hopes and our fears. I have come to believe that hope and fear is nothing but those old memories living on and through in our hearts.
For hope is nothing more than a search for something we may have lost somewhere between the time we left the great blissful stage of oneness and now. And fear is nothing more than the scar tissue left from a loss–The acknowledgment that maybe just maybe our beloved will disappear, that our hearts will stop feeling this love, that it will all fall apart, forever.
This past year for me has been a year of yearning. I couldn’t name it at the time, but now standing apart from it somewhat I can see. My heart beat stretching between hope and a sort of fear.
I had always associated fear with anxiety–that somehow fear meant that I was in a deep scary place. But looking back now I just see that fear is the other side of the coin called hope. Even in my happiest yang-i-est, sunniest days that hope fear combo was ever present.
As I fell head over heels in love with my tribe this year, the people in my life who make my life so rich and full, I found my heart so full of a cocktail of hope and fear that at times the bursting feeling felt so distracting. With every perfect moment that passed I felt my heart holding on to, hoping that that perfect moment would be followed by many many more just like it . As each perfect moment passed, I found my heart fearing that if I let go of this moment I may never see another just as lovely. The clinging and the hoping and the attaching that this is how it would be forever…always like this…That was the beat of my heart. Expand into hope, contract into fear, expand into hope and not even realize it is happening. Bumbum…bumbum…Silently unnoticed like my own heart beat.
Looking back though I can feel how much energy this hope and fear sapped from me. Looking back I can see what it cost me, this yearning. I can see with 20/20 hindsight.
A series of things have brought me to a place where I can observe how hope and fear play out in my heart, in my soul, in my hardest moments and my best days. A series of things have happened that showed me that hope, fear and attachment do not change anything. The universe spins. The world evolves. Moments come and dissipate and change and we cannot hold onto any of them no matter how lovely or how frightening. The moments dissolve seemlessly into another and no amount of hope or fear is going to change the next one from coming.
Letting go of hope and fear seems to be my soul’s work these days. Seeing how omnipresent it is, recognizing that every time I think I have let it go, I uncover a new layer, more subtle, less stark, but there nonetheless. Letting go of hope and fear means truly letting go of my attachment to the outcomes. I wonder if I ever really can let go of all my attachments. I seem to think that if I can just let that last layer burn away that my heart might be finally be free to expand outside the confines of all that hope/fear scar tissue.
On Sunday I woke up in a headachey fog. This feeling was one I only remembered from long ago. It had been so long since I had felt so terrible I thought I must have been mistaken, that this sensation was just a trick someone was playing on me, that it would pass as soon as I got the joke, as soon as I laughed.
I did my regular headache self-care ritual, the things I do that keep these monsters at bay. The advil, the hot towels, the extra bit of sleep. But the beast inside my head would not quiet. I got up and went about my day, convinced that this was all still just an illusion, a memory, a glimpse at a picture postcard of me from another time.
I went to Jackie’s to pick up Max. He had spent the night with Jake. I sat and drank water and tried to hold conversation. I looked pale and puffy and not quite right to anyone. And then it started.
It has been years since I felt this way, the vomiting, the fury that runs through my body causing convulsions, the intense pain that feels like knives in my head. Its been years since physical pain has put me in the space of living breath to breath. Even in the worst of it, I whispered to my sweet self…Breathe, you will come through this…You have so many times before. Breathe….Now again.
A thunderstorm raged outside, thunder and lightening crashing down on one another. I thought to myself, how nice of mother nature to move along in empathy of me. As the rain fell heavy I fell asleep. And when I woke there was a brief reprieve. The rain had stopped. I walked home and collapsed into bed.
Hours later the knives came back. This time no warm towels, no calming tea, no amount of self care or breathing could contain the pain. I was laying on the bathroom floor shivering but needing to feel the cool tile underneath my body. I needed some relief from the fire I felt burning through my head. I kept trying to think of cooling thoughts.
Odette came in and declared that she was not OK with this. She was calling help. I was too weak to argue (much). I lay and whimpered while she called first one friend and then another.
In the hospital I lay, my dear friend stroking my back and soothing my forehead and whispering to me that my help was coming. I wanted to believe her and lived one breath at a time. The nurse came in an injected me with a pain killer. There was one last violent fight–my body versus me and then slowly relief started to set in. Tests, hydration, and then release…home to sleep a deep sleep. Home to slip away into the quiet.
I woke better than I had been in months. Years even. The pain was a distant ache, I looked like I had been through hell and back, and felt tired and battle weary but lighter. Something inside me had burned away in the fire, a distraction, a yearning, a seeking that had finally found rest.
During my very first guitar lesson almost a year ago I learned three chords–C, G and F.
It was then that I learned that “F” would be my nemesis.
Its been over nine months and despite hours of practice and calloused Fingers, I still can’t get that damned “F” chord to sound pretty. Its Frustrating, inFuriating even. When I tell my guitar playing Friends how I struggle with “F” they look at my as though I am a Freak…”Really?” they say. “Really? Hmmm…and how long have you been playing?” Yeah…that “F” chord makes me Feel like a Failure, blocked, stuck.
My teacher keeps telling me that I just need to practice. To keep trying, now matter how Futile my efforts may seem. He counsels that one day it will all Fall into place. I am Frankly not sure though if at this point even he buys it or if he is simply trying to keep me going, prevent me from quitting in order to ensure that the Forty dollars I pay him every week continues Flowing his way.
The fact I am Flunking “F” sometimes Feels too big. To be honest, when I take out my guitar, sometimes I skip over all the songs that have an “F” in them. Hearing the muffled, blocked sound over and over again sometimes reminds me too much of all the other ways I Fail, over and over again to get it right–the big and the small…Its dead tone speaks to me my Failed marriage and my inability to Focus at work. It taunts me with reminders of Forgotten birthdays and the Forty Seven things on the to-do list that didn’t get done again today.
But other times I play “F” over and over again, until my Fingers are raw and my hand is cramped and sore. I play F with the hopes that maybe if I can Finally Figure out that F*%!cking “F” chord then I can Figure out how to Fix the other stuck parts of my life too–the Finances that are a bit too shaky, the Friendship that Feels a bit too Fragile, the stupid Fights I have with my son over and over again about trying new Foods, or his Filthy room. In those Frenzied moments I almost believe that “F” holds all the secrets and that if I could crack the code of this chord that magic would Flow like a river into my life.
Sometimes, when I am diligently working I hear a clear sound and Feel elated only to realize I can’t duplicate it–success is Fleeting and dissolves too quickly.
Stupid Friggin’ “F” chord.
It can bring up all my worst Fears–like my Fear that I will never move Forward, that I will be stuck wandering around the desert trying to learn the simplest of lessons over and over again, not just in guitar but in life. “F” can make me question why I even started to try to tackle something so hard, why I bit off more than I can chew and leaves me Feeling Foolish. “F” can leave me Fed Up and Freaked out and just one step short of quitting.
And in those moments when “F” has me Flummoxed and Frazzled, a little voice starts to whisper to me.
“F” is for Faith.
“F” is for Fortitude
“F” is for Fearless and Freedom and Flying.
All the ways I try and Fail and try and Fail and keep trying is a practice, a practice that may take me in circles but ultimately may shake loose some of the Fears heal some of the Fractures in my heart. It may just give me what I need.
“F” is my teacher.
