Last summer, on one steamy August night I sat on the couch. I was having another late night talk with Jackie. She lives just down the way. I wanted to sit with her on her porch and drink a glass of wine and tell stories. But Max was sleeping and it was late and I am, after all a single mom. “What you need”, she said, “is a roommate.” It was a leap for me to agree with her since I had come to value my solitude in the years since Juan had left but I leapt and I had to agree with her.
****
My roommate Odette and I were sitting hunched over the kitchen counter, counting cash and making plans for what to do to deal with her daughter Grace’s diagnosis with TB, the fact that her younger child Lillian too had been exposed, that her entire family back home in Africa was at risk for developing the disease. “Do you think everyone in the family should be tested?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, claiming her power as a matriarch. “Yes, I do.” Max looked at me with wide eyes, “Mom–will a TB test hurt?” I looked at him shocked. “We’re not getting tested baby,”. “But why not,” he said, his eyes still wide with fear, “We are her are family.”
Yes, we are. I think about the crazy path that took us from that moment in August to this moment now–this recognition that we are more than friends, more than housemates. That we are family. And I think, I never ever would have ended up here had it not been for a wild crazy leap.
****
Back in August, Jackie and I walked the dogs and plotted about how I would find a roommate. Someone who would accept our terms but who would be nevertheless a good fit for us. But I needed someone who would trade heavily reduced rent for the regular babysitting and for agreeing to stay home so I could run over to Jackie’s for a glass of wine after Max had gone to sleep. Where would I find someone like that? The thought of finding anyone who fit the bill seemed downright impossible.
****
Tonight, Odette and sat at the table eating ice cream. We looked at each other and exclaimed, “What would I do with out you?” “NO…what would I have done without YOU?” “No what WOULD I HAVE DONE WITHOUT YOU?” Neither of us can get over the miracle of how we stumbled into finding each other when we needed exactly what the other had to offer.
The story of how she came into our life was magical, a story which will need to be told another day. I never needed to post an ad, I never needed to interview candidates. I found her and she needed a place to stay. We made the decision in a half hour sitting in the living room of a mutual friend. Cheap rent in exchange for cheap babysitting seemed like a really good deal. But what I never really understood was that when she walked into our house and settled in that I had found a long lost sister. That when she moved in she would bring sisterhood with her in her suitcase.
When Odette walked into our house back in September we both took a leap of faith. We had no idea what this experiment would have in store for us, how much we would each gain from this arrangement. We were two strangers who would have to deal with each other in pretty extreme and unusual circumstances.
She came to our house searching for her freedom and in coming gave me mine too. She came searching for a safe spot but ended up providing a safe space for Max. She came looking for a place to rest her head, but she instead has offered a shoulder where I rest on the nights when I feel weary or sad.
I am rambling here, not quite sure what or how I want to say. I think it something about leaping–about listening to your heart when it tells you to jump. I think it is about recognizing doors that open intentionally, answering prayers–about realizing that life unfolds in patterns that may not make sense at the time but with hindsight open with perfectly timed synchronicity.
The blogosphere is full this week of stories of leaping into sacred, scary places. Of feeling the fear and doing it anyhow. Of trusting and relaxing into what seems absolutely the right place to go. Of saying, “I got the life that I needed.”
I am not always sure why I got this crazy life instead of the one I had always imagined I would have. But one thing is abundantly clear to me as I get myself ready for sleep this night.
I am grateful for the leaping.
A year ago today I was sitting with my dear friend Jen Lemen at a neighborhood potluck in the park. We were talking about my fruitless efforts to get Max’s dad to be more active in his life. I was frantic about what would come of him without a strong male role model. I was interrupted when suddenly, chaos broke out at the picnic table. Being a curious girl, I stopped my anxious rant and I wandered over to see what all the fuss was. A bunch of neighbors I barely knew were singing Happy Birthday to some guy.
In an attempt to determine whether the cake was chocolate (an important fact that would determine whether I would stick around) I looked toward the birthday boy. I was stunned by what happened next.
It was one of those moments where the past, present and future all seem to exist in exactly the same moment. One of those moments where time stands still–where the world stops spinning for a second or a lifetime.
This may sound weird but it happened just like this: I laid eyes on him and instantly knew that I would love him. Not in a swooning, romantic way. But with love weighty and substantial like a boulder. I had a flash of recognition–I knew him from somewhere in my long ago past or my far ahead future and I knew, the way I know my own name, that I would love him–or to be more accurate–that I already did.
And then a breeze blew or someone called out to me and the world started spinning again. I shook it off. He was just a guy I didn’t know. The cake was (regrettably) not chocolate. So I slipped away unnoticed leaving him with his family and friends, returning to talk to Jen about blogging. I chalked up the experience to two too many glasses of rum punch on a warm afternoon and the blissful way I feel about my community. These things happen.
The months tumbled on. Summer events and parties filled our schedule. I bumped into this neighbor of mine from time to time and we exchanged pleasantries. I learned that he is a steadfast friend to some of my dear ones. I made note of the fact that he seems to give with a wide open heart. That he really knows how to pack a moving van. That he throws a kick-ass party.
But I never again thought twice about the picnic table and the cake and the rush of warmth I felt for him that day. I had forgotten it already. The summer was big and ripe and full and there was so much to think about and May felt so far away.
One night in August, Max slept over at the house of neighborhood friends. I stayed awake reading, waiting for Jackie to call me to let me know her kids were sound asleep. We had plans to sneak away to her porch and have a glass of wine. But I was sleepy and my book was very good and so when the phone rang, I almost told Jackie that I was done for the night.
But I didn’t. I met her on her porch and then walked with her to a dinner party that was winding down. I didn’t know these people and didn’t feel the slightest bit social but felt somehow that going there was what I needed to do.
I shyly sat at a table where a neighbor, none other than the birthday boy who didn’t have a chocolate cake, reigned as a king of the stories. Drawn in by the storytelling, I found myself laughing harder than I had in months. One by one people peeled off and then it was just four of us in the yard under the stars with one last glass of wine and it dawned on me–I really wish I had a good guy friend. I miss this.
I wish I could really say how it happened that we became friends as summer gave way to fall. But there really is no story to it. It happened so gradually and naturally I barely knew it was happening. I didn’t try to make him my friend. He didn’t try to make me his either. In simple acts of neighborliness he eased into our lives.
For the last 8 months or so he has taught me to play guitar. We camp together and hang out with Jackie on her front porch. He has becomes my conspirator–the one I know I can drag out to go listen to live music. He will crack open a beer with me on a school night. He will stay up late around a campfire and chat.
We can spend hours talking about guitar, hockey, food, parenting and music. We are a built in audience for each other’s stories. He is the only person in my life (other than Jenni Ballantyne) who can sing with me the entire score of Jesus Christ Superstar from opening note to closing curtain. As an added bonus he can play the guitar parts.
He is my accidental zen teacher. He will casually say something while working with me on music that will resonate at a deeper level. I will turn over what he said like a koan, a little zen puzzle that leaves me thinking for days. Like Superman with x-ray vision, he can see right through my carefully constructed pretenses and nail my insecurities. He calls me on them in a way that makes me laugh.
He helps me pick out the outfits I wear on first dates. He helps himself to beer in my fridge.
But what really turns my heart inside out is the friendship he has built with my son. He gets Max. And he gives to him from a seemingly bottomless well.
Sometime this fall he realized that Max was a guys’ guy stuck in an all-girl house. Even more importantly, Max who is all yang energy, all boy, had no mirror to look into to imagine himself all grown up, a healthy, strong, compassionate man. Little by little he has adopted Max. Or maybe Max has adopted him. They have adopted each other.
When we went ice skating he took Max by the hand and Max looked up at him with eyes that sparkled. He brought him to his son’s hockey games and sat with him in the scorebooth explaining each play. He is becoming a regular fixture at pick up at Max’s school and he takes Max swimming almost every week. He comes by the house early on guitar lesson nights so that they have some “guy” time before Max needs to settle in. Sometimes they wrestle, sometimes they talk, sometimes they play killer attack duck vs playmobile guys. But then always Max snuggles into his lap, wraps his arms around him and never wants to let go. At bedtime I literally need to peel Max away from him. Sometimes I just want to let Max stay there, cuddled up against his chest. I want to kiss them both on the forehead, turn out the light and be warmed by the glow of their affection for each other.
He has filled a wide expansive gap in Max’s life. When Max and he are together I see deep wounds healing right before my eyes. Our whole tribe has all noticed it–how Max is knitting himself back together in some of the places where he hurts most–the parts having to do with trust and consistency and men. And I know that a major part of it is the friendship he has found with this neighbor.
So yes–it is a year later and I find that sure enough I have come to love him with a boulder-like love: plain and ordinary, unmovable and solid . I love him for all that he has given Max, for the everyday ways he gives to us both. I love him for the blues he plays and the way that he sings for me. I love him for packing the van when we go camping and for cooking soups when we are hungry. I love him for dozens of small kindness he extends our tribe, the hundreds of ways he cherishes his family, for the thousands of ways he teaches his children to care. I love him for his stupid jokes and his strong opinions but mostly I love him just because he is good.
People ask, “How long have you known him?” When I measure the time in months people are always shocked. And I am too. Even as the words exit my lips I realize that I want to say “I have known him always. He has been my friend ever since I can remember. ”
One night, a few months ago, he got ready to leave my house after our weekly guitar lesson. I reached up to casually hug him as is my habit now, it is an act that feels as natural as breathing. And suddenly out of nowhere the birthday cake, the singing and the lighting strike of recognition came to me. In fact it almost knocked me over.
And I realized that that afternoon flash forward in May was not about the rum. It was a call to pay attention. As he walked out the door, I stood rooted in the belief that yes some things just unfold exactly as they should without us having to do a thing. We find the people we need without searching. We go looking for chocolate cake and we don’t know what other sweet gifts we will find.
From that day forward, I have found myself completely relaxing into faith, letting go of old tired habits of worry. I may fret now and again for dramatic effect, but that horrible anxious stuff that used to fill my brain, the voice that used to tell me it was all going to hell in a handbasket-its now gone. Somehow, the whole experience of this friendship which unfolded so effortlessly, this friendship which has answered my most fervent prayers for Max, has changed me at a cellular level. I now believe that whoever, whatever we need will arrive at exactly the right moment if we are just open enough to welcome it/them in. It may not be what we expected or even what we imagined but it is what we need.
Love is going to carry us, like a river, home.
I recently realized that for all the stories I have told my friend I have never told him this one–the story of the cake and the singing and the rum and the deep knowledge that bubbled up from nowhere. I never told him of how he, simply through his regular old work-a-day effortless presence, restored my sense of faith to the place it was before I was born. How simply by being he taught me to trust–not others but myself and my crazy gut.
He doesn’t read this blog. It’s not his thing. And besides he hears most of my stories, spun out in the oral storyteller tradition of my ancestors. But maybe just maybe the next time he grabs a beer from the fridge I will start a story that says, “On your last birthday, the strangest thing happened…” In the meantime, I will whisper this wish out to wind, and tuck it in a card we will slip under his door.
Happy Birthday darlin’…Here’s to you, the love you bring to so many and your big ol’ heart. May your year be full of the kind of magic that you bring whenever you walk through our door. You are plainly extraordinary.
My friend Maya needs our help. The other day when wandering through the office she told me a story that made me weep. I need to tell it here and ask you all to help us.
Last Wednesday, two of her family’s oldest and dearest friends, Waheed and Nusrat Hashmi, an elderly Pakistani couple, were ripped from their homeby Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Hashmis were placed in detention near Cleveland, where they remain, clothed in orange jumpsuits, unable to see each other. They are likely to be deported this week.
The Hashmi’s story is a story of the system failing. Plain and simple, it is a story of it all going wrong. Dr. Waheed Hashmi legally entered the United States in 1973 as a Fulbright Scholar. Since then, he has worked with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with immigration attorneys to ensure that he and his family have a chance to attain permanent residency in the United States. He followed the rules every step of the way.
Over a period of approximately 35 years Dr. Hashmi, a scientist, and Ms. Nusrat Hashmi, a floral designer, have lovingly raised their children, held jobs, paid taxes, contributed towards social security, and invested their time and talents to build a better Toledo community.Due to a series of circumstances and occurrences beyond their control, including oversights on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, some of which were revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, the Hashmis have faced several obstacles to attaining permanent residency but they never gave up hope of achieving what all immigrants want–a decent life for themselves and their children. However, as law abiding people, when they recently realized that their dream of staying here could not be realized, they voluntarily made plans to leave and return home to a country they had not been home for more than three decades. But those plans were interrupted last week when ICE showed up at their door and arrested them.
If the authorities had taken the time to explore the details of the Hashmis’ case, they would have learned that after Dr. Hashmi retired from the University of Toledo, the couple began the process of selling their home and leaving for Pakistan where a job was waiting for Dr. Hashmi. They were never given the chance to prove that they were in the process of returning to Pakistan. Instead, public resources were used to lock up this elderly couple who posed absolutely no threat or risk of flight.
At the Maple Heights City Jail, Dr. and Ms. Hashmi are being held in separate quarters, are unable to see each other, and their interaction with their children has been severely restricted–they have been allowed only 20-minute visitations during which they can only speak with their children via a telephone and across a glass screen. The trauma of the detention threatens the health of Dr. and Ms. Hashmi–both of whom have serious health problems.
As it stands now, they will never again see their home in Toledo. They won’t be able to say their goodbyes–to their home, their community of 35 years, not even to their children, who won’t even be allowed to hug their parents before they leave.
It is simply inhumane to hold two elderly people in custody for no good reason, especially when they were voluntarily planning to depart the U.S. The Hashmi detention is a colossal waste of precious tax dollars and does not make us any safer. ICE should lock up those who would do us harm, not senior citizens whose misfortune has brought them into the grip of a dysfunctional immigration system. ICE needs to do the right thing and release Dr. and Ms. Hashmi.
Please read more about the case and consider signing on to a letter to Julie Myers, the head of ICE. Maya and her family , are hoping that if enough of us speak up together the Hashmi’s can be released from detention and allowed to close up their house, say their goodbyes and start their new life with dignity. The unjust detention of the Hashmis is not at all an unusual case. The Hashmi family hopes that bringing attention to their case will help the push for immigration reform.
You can get to the online petition that Maya set up by clicking here. Please take a moment to go there and read their story. This should not be. It should not be. It should not be.
UPDATE:
The Hashmis have been released! Our joint efforts on many fronts—grassroots, legal, and political—sent a powerful message to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It was late. A band was still playing but I was the only one on the dance floor. In between songs I would ran about the room, collecting cups and plates, throwing away trash. Almost everyone who was still there was actually on stage, except maybe Odette who was fast asleep on the couch. It was a good evening.
And yet it was a complex evening for me too. As it wound down I felt myself grow grouchier. Sure I was touched by the magic but I was tired, my body ached from two days of cooking and a full night of dancing. The refreshments had left me a little fuzzy too and I found myself being impatient, snappy and downright grumpy.
But there was another reason too. Even in the swirl, as I packed off Max with neighbors and sent him off to a sleepover, even as I danced with one friend and then another, a feeling bubbled up from a place deep inside. I couldn’t name it then–I didn’t have the perspective to be able to do it. It felt so dissonant compared to the rest of the evening. But now, as it lingers I can call it by name. Loneliness.
It is such an odd thing to feel lonely in the midst of my beautiful community. But it happens from time to time. It is the moment when I realize that I am raising my child alone–without the one person who loves him as much as I do. It happens sometimes when I am dropping him off at school, or when I am wrapping Christmas presents. It is the moment when I so desperately need to be seen for who I am and I find that no one quite gets it (at least the way Juan would try). It is the moment when I am dancing and realize I have no partner. On most days my community stands in so well–loving Max, helping me keep it all together, being a place where we can laugh, and chat and share–but there are just some roles that they cannot fill. But still it is so strange and uncomfortable to be in a room the people who love you best and to feel so damn alone.
Odette and I talk a lot about this feeling. These days 95% of the time we can hold it together, but sometimes, the smallest thing–a snide comment from a friend, a misunderstanding, a disappointment can open up the whole damn pandora’s box of emotion and suddenly everything seems so utterly complicated and sad. Suddenly there is only one factor that matters. I am alone. And I don’t know how I am going to keep doing it by myself. But I do…and I will.
Tomorrow I will wake up and the feeling will have dissipated. The sun will rise, sweet sweet sleep will cradle me. I will realize that I am only alone in a few things and yes, we all feel alone from time to time–even in the midst of a near perfect marriage. I will wander to the mirror, look with love upon a woman, strong–if not entirely always secure and then turn and do what needs to happen next. And love will carry us after all. It usually does.
About two months ago, my friend Jeff and I were sitting on the couch after a guitar lesson. “Hey,” he said. “There is something I want to talk to you about.”
“What?” I asked him intrigued. Our chats, usually about things like guitar and our kids rarely start this way.
“I have a brilliant idea. Let’s throw a party for Odette. To help raise money to support her daughters. “ Odette has worked her way into everyone’s heart in this community. She is light, a gentle peaceful presence whose kindness is felt by all of us.
And so the planning began. The planning that resulted in a musical benefit. Jeff’s photo studio became transformed into a magical space with funky lights and a retro couch, a full stage. African food was spread out over a table and potluck desserts came in by the tray-ful. A band was up on stage, playing their heart out all night from 6pm-well after 2:30. We raised over $3750 in one night.
As each guest walked through the door my heart leapt. It was a parade of many of my favorite people–people who are kind, supportive, loving and gentle to Max and I on a daily basis. People from my work, from our neighborhood, from Jackie’s and Jeff’s wide circles
I am sure there are amazing pictures of the evening. The lovely shutter sister Jen Lemen wandered about all night with her magical camera, while I held down the dance floor with Odette, the beautiful Madeline and other children and friends. But we will need to wait to get the photos (I promise I will post a link when Jen gets them up) but in the meantime I can simply say the evening shimmered.
Now its all back to almost normal. Our kitchen is still trashed from our marathon cooking but the photo studio is back to looking like an industrial studio. The leftover wine has been stored. The keg has been returned. We have sent out thank yous and are now in that exhausted, hung-over, spacey space. There are some post-party blues to contend with (aren’t there always?) but for now I keep repeating the word “grateful” over again and again. It is a word that sums up how I feel about the place I live, the people I share the park with, a community so wide and open.
Today is the start of a magical weekend. It is a weekend that already is brimming with love and community and kindness.
It is the start of the Bloggers for Jeni Auction. Please click over here to view some of the amazing objects in the store. There are beautiful prints offered by some talented Shutter Sisters. There are adorable baby clothes, a necklace made by this superhero, beautiful hand carved wooden bowls, products to pamper oneself. There is one special offering for a comfy day with one of my favorite authors Karen Maezen Miller. The auction will be up and running through Thursday May 1.
All of the money raised will go to support our dear friend Jennifer Ballantyne, a courageous cancer warrior and her 6 year old son Jack. Money will be used to help Jen get access to care not covered by insurance as well as provide a trust for little Jack, a charming boy who sings love songs to his mother each night.
Here are some things you can do to help spread the word and help us create some miracles for Jen and Jack:
1) Go over to the auction, find something special and bid.
2) Let friends and family know about the auction.
3) If you blog, please post about the auction and include a link to it.
Wishing you a weekend full of miracles and magic.
If it seems I have fallen off the face of the earth this week, I haven’t. Its just been a busy, crazy, wonderful, falling down nutty week–full of activity and drama. There was hockey to watch and sob over, live music to go see, a sweet 6 year old boy to cuddle, and an amazing party to plan. I can’t wait to tell you about this last one but its got to happen first. I am almost afraid to speak of it, for fear that I will somehow attach some expectation to it that will just ruin it for me.
I remember when Juan’s Tio Gordo and Tia Fidelina built their new house. It was a spectacular house in a modest village–two stories high with balconies dripping with bougainvillea. People came from 5 villages away to see it, to celebrate its birth. We too went down to Veracruz for the house blessing. The event was bigger than a wedding and wonderful in all the ways that happy occasions are but I personally found the rituals around the party were more delicious than the party itself. There was the shopping for the perfect ingredients, the purchase of a big spoon worthy of a witch’s cauldron, to stir mole for 500 over an open fire. There were two nights straight of cooking, grinding corn, cooking mole over coals, forming tamales by hand. There was the afternoon setting up the stage for the band. And then the magical party itself.
Its gonna be like the next few days. It started today as we passed emails around, solidifying our plans. Tomorrow Odette and I will rise with the sun, get Max off to school and we will start to shop and then chop. All afternoon sisters will come in through our front door wielding knives and will join us in the chopping, the wine, the singing. Then at 6 we will take our food to store in a big industrial fridge at the photo studio where we will work to set up our fete. Ten of us will drag tables and lights and music equipment around and transform a photo studio into something else. When we wake the next morning there will be more cooking, more running to the liquor store, more final preparations. And then there will be a party. A party for a very special woman, my housemate Odette. A simple and beautiful person who walked through our magic door and changed all our lives in ways we cannot even begin to explain, ways we are all still trying to understand. Bands will wander on and off stage, bread will be broken and wine will flow and in the end, we will have raised money for her girls, preparing them a home for a someday soon reunion, building them a family to walk into, preparing them a place of rest.
Thinking about it all I just feel giddy and grateful.
What are you looking forward to this weekend?
The magical Max picking a name out of the hat…
There was a deep sigh of relief at our house this afternoon. A deep deep sigh. Our Washington Capitals finally beat back the Flyers and are now just one game down. Of course, the next pivotal game is in Philadelphia but still…there is hope here in Washington.
This week with the last three losses have been a little hard over at our house. On Tuesday night, Max stayed up to watch the game with me. In some ways it was blissful. A freshly bathed child, in his pjs, cuddled on his mama’s lap. I loved the sweet smell of him. Together we cheered on our boys, talked about penalties and exchanged thoughts about the game. Mother-son bonding at its best.
By the second period, our bonding took an ugly turn. Together we started yelling at the TV, the refs, Daniel Briere. But at a pivotal point, when the refs made a bad call and the Flyers got to make a penalty shot on the goal and it went in…well, lets just say I seriously questioned my decision to let him stay up late. From the minute the puck hit the net he started to sob into my chest. “I HATE THE FLYERS…I HATE THE FLYERS…They are mean, they are bullies and I hate them. SH*T…SH*T…SH*T!” (yes… he did)
All I could do was rock him back and forth, kiss his hair and soothe his little spirit. “Its just a game, babe…Our boys will get it back. They are the come back kids.” (Later I had to explain to him that the SH*T word is one we save only for hockey.) I actually used my handy dandy DVR to pause the game and took him upstairs to put him down to sleep, singing lullabies I haven’t had to pull out for years. As I came back downstairs to watch the sad ending of the game, feeling a bit woozy and beaten up ,a fierce raw mama love rose up in me and turned into sheer spitting anger at the Flyers. Yes, iIts been a very healthy week here.
So, needless to say, we are thrilled that the Caps brought it home today. Today we sat on the floor, just feet from our huge TV and screamed our lungs out. Max asked me to hug him as hard as I could to help him control his nervousness. We were on the edge, both of us, until that final buzzer sounded but for now we are OK. Its good to win, even if its only a passing phenomenon.
And speaking of winning…The winner of the Howdy Stranger giveaway of the beautiful MotherHenna mug is
none other than my writing partner and sweet soulsister Jena Strong at Bullseye Baby! Thanks to everyone who left comments, especially those of you leaving your very first one over here. I found myself wishing everyone of you could win a piece of Kara’s beautiful art and longed for the cash to buy many many mugs. I loved hearing from each and every one of you and hope that you will leave more. My magical door is open. Please come on in.
I want to take a break from my discussions about now, and life and magic and parenting and soul sisters and all that to simply say: These guys rock.
Awww…yeah…I’m so smitten with my community, is it true. I couldn’t help myself. Had to post about ‘em. But…aren’t they good y’all, these friends of mine? They are so talented but more than that–they are so damn fun.
I love that I have friends that sing and play for me. I love that I get to hear these guys around a campfire, in my living room and around the corner on a regular basis. I love that music, played joyfully is a part of every day in our life in one way or another.
I am a lucky girl.
And did I say it already…these guys– they really do rock.
Back when I was in my teens or very early 20s I had a vision of my future and it looked like this: I would finally make it, be wildly famous if only in a small circle, have lots of friends, and life would be largely effortless.
The things that would be difficult, I imagined would be amazing challenges–like hiking up high Asian mountains, or writing THE speech, or winning some national prize. I imagined that things like getting the laundry done, remembering birthdays, matching my clothes and looking passably fashionable would be so old hat. Certainly things like caring for children and getting a healthy dinner on the table and the grocery shopping done–that stuff would be done breezily in no time flat, leaving me lots of time to struggle nobly with poetry, and science and other meaningful critical important stuff.
I read this post today by Jena–Her blog is often a mirror for me–I go there and see so much of my own internal world reflected. In her post I recognized so clearly the way I sometimes hold the ordinary regular old stuff in my life. I wonder why it is 20 years later and I am still struggling to figure out how to get the cat fed and the recycling to the curb and the kitchen floor mopped, why small things can leave me feeling a bit flustered and why I do not have a perfectly ordered and neatly wrapped up life like “everyone else”. Or I stomp around grumpily through the mundane wondering when I can get through it, when there is going to be time to be brilliant and glamorous the way I imagined it would always be. Fortunately, I recognized too my own eventual settling into the notion that really at the end of the day I am enough. Happily enough.
I am so thrilled to be regular and unglamorous. To not always have it together. To screw up and make mistakes and learn.
Yesterday Jen Lemen talked about many of the things that leave her feeling foolish. Oh I have my list too. Many of them are mentioned above. Jen and I spend hours giggling over all the ways we play the fool and yet in this laughter I see beauty reflected back at me. I look in this mirror and know that I am exactly perfectly who I need to be right now. That its quite OK to be able to the kind of person who doesn’t always hold it all together so neatly but instead who runs around with life spilling over her arms, dropping pieces of lovingly constructed color along the way. Flawed but authentic. Jumping in with both feet. Getting messy. Living now.
And just now, I stood at this mirror. How crisply I saw my reflection in Bella’s story even though the contours are so very different. I am on the otherside of my divorce and am truly healed and yet the echoes of who I once was are still there. And I wonder what that means. Like Bella, after a long struggle to overcome difficult things I am used to being in healing mode. I laugh with glee when I realize that I am actually on the other side –not in the thick of it anymore and have to giggle when I say, “What is my excuse now? What is holding me back”
And speaking of now, I also today found this little gem at another of my favorite places to go for comfort–Cheerio Road. I thought Karen Maezen Miller just hit it perfectly–this notion of what it means to live in the moment. To be present NOW. Its so cliche, so chic these days to talk about THE NOW as though you need some special sort of wisdom, you need to have obtained some special enlightenment to live in the present. I am printing this post out and taping it to my mirror to remind myself that there is no future when I will be glamorous–there is no time when it will all fall together. There is no time when I won’t play the fool. There is no time when I will forget what happened in the past. No–there is only now. With me in it, enough–more than enough.
I am tonight standing at my mirrors, gazingly lovingly at soulsisters who hold themselves up so that I may see myself clearly. And am thankful.
