Its the longest night of the year. It is cold and rainy. And yet, I know, deep in my heart that the world is turning, that the sun is on the rise, that goodness and possibility and joy are just around the corner, for me and for you too. And all we need to do to get there, to the warmth, to the sun, to the bright days ahead is stay here, exactly where we are, with one another.
When the night has come, and the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No I won’t be afraid…no I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.
My sweet Jackie and her precious daughter, the one who sat in that magic purple stroller.
It was only four words. Four words that I spoke out loud only by accident. I was newly pregnant. Juan and I were walking in the park. “That’s a nice stroller” I said tangentially to Juan, nodding toward a woman walking just a few feet away pushing a baby in a purple jogging stroller.
“Are you pregnant?” she said.
“Ummm…yeah…”I replied, nervous about putting the words out there publicly. “Just about 11 weeks”.
“Me too” she said “Eight weeks.” She nodded to the little one in the stroller. “They will be just 18 months apart.”
We walked together for a long stretch, down a pathway, around the corner, through the woods, across a street, talking about midwives, and children, a families before we finally said goodbye.
After that day, we waved and said hello when we would bump into each other. Later at the park, our babies, both boys, would sit together in the sandbox while we chatted about being working moms. We would push our kids in the swings and talk.
It was she who told me about the pre-school where I would eventually send Max, and the one who insisted that I sign up on the waiting list even though they were full. When Max got into her son’s class it was she who called to welcome me, sign me up for classroom duties and made me feel welcome. It was at that place where I met Jen and eventually where Jen (and I) found Odette.
And it was she who would eventually become my soul-sister, the mother of my son’s dear friend, the anchor of our neighborhood community. It was she who eventually introduced Max and I to a myriad of people who make our world sparkly and what it is today.
I often wonder what would have happened had I kept my thoughts to myself that day. What would have happened had I not nodded in the direction of the woman with the purple stroller. I’d like to think that I would have found Jackie anyway. That we would have landed around the same campfires gazing up at stars, that we would have still made communal meals, that we would spend hours watching addictive TV or picking lice out of our children’s hair or roaming through Miami Beach through some other path. I like to think that our hearts would have found each other some other way, some other place…but its hard to know for sure.
This weekend I sat on a rock pile with Jackie and Dolores, one of the dear people who Jackie brought into my life. I wrapped my arms around Jackie and held her close, so grateful I was for her simple presence here in my life. We were laughing about life and how it turns out, about Girl Scout troops, about the unexpected.
As I look forward this week to Thanksgiving I am reflecting on all that make me grateful. Not just for the big amazing things, like community and love and friendship and soul sisterhood. But for the small things, the tiny imperceptible decisions that lead to developing these things in our lives. For the coincidences and the tiny moments when the world unknowingly shifts and changes and spins in a new direction. For the words I uttered about a purple jogging stroller that would, unknowingly, begin to weave a strong support net, one that would catch me when I fell out of my marriage and into a new way of being. And for the love I might never known had I not uttered them.
Who would have thought, “That’s a nice stroller” would have been a magic spell, but those four words drew open a door through which love has paraded on through.
Tell me about what tiny little things you are grateful for this week….Tell me a story of something small that opened the door to something big and wonderous. Leave a comment here on the blog or leave us a link to your post on the matter. On Thanksgiving night I will randomly pick one of you to receive a piece of Jackie’s amazing pottery.
For Jackie, who I love greatly.
This past week I have been walking dogs. In the face of illness and tragedy, it seems like the only thing I could possibly do was show up, and walk the dog. When the humans were grieving, vomiting, sleeping, pacing, someone needed to walk the pooch. This week that human was often me.
Walking the dog is just something that needs to be done, like laundry or taking out the trash. No matter how worlds spin out of control, a dog needs to be walked. For me, walking the dog has become a metaphor for picking up and getting on with it. For continuing acknowledging pain and then just doing what needs to be done, without fanfare or drama. Quite literally it is about cleaning up the poop, stretching ones legs, breathing in the air and going around the block only to arrive exactly at where I started.
Max and I have been walking dogs together this week. He keeps track of each of them and asks me each night in the car, “Allie or Louie, mom?” We walk for a half hour at a time, giving the dogs time to explore. We walk and find ourselves talking about things that never would have occured to us otherwise. About the smell of leaves or the mean kid at school or about why dogs talk to each other by peeing.
Its been cold this week. Brutally cold for Maryland in November and I wonder about dragging my son out in the evening for these walks. But Max rarely complains. He doesn’t even ask me anymore about why, why do we need to go. My answer is simple. We need to walk the dog because it needs to be done. Someone is ill, sick, in the hospital, tired. So we will go. That is how we are as a community. When one of us is out the other walks the dog. No big deal.
And it is no big deal. It is no fancy thing–no gourmet meal prepared, no major Herculean task. It is a walk, around the block reminding me that life goes on, and on and on. And when the bottom falls out, we can simply do more than keep it moving.
Jeff and Max off exploring new spaces at sunset.
Love is a messy thing.
Recently Max has felt pretty clingy and undone–there is so much swirl going on in our life–so much instability. Odette’s illness this fall really rocked his world, and the recent cancer diagnoses in our world have him feeling unstable, unsure and scared. He has been clinging to those he loves like a life raft. And he loves Jeff. Deeply.
Recently Max told me that he sometimes wished our friend Jeff was his dad. Not that long ago he told me that he felt like Jeff was his “second dad” and another time “just like a dad”. And suddenly, each time he utters the “d” word, I have come a bit undone myself.
Jeff plays a special role in Max’s life, one that is hard to define. They go swimming together and share a love for hockey. Jeff offers a safe lap for Max to crawl into when he is feeling a bit wounded. He tells stories and wrestles with Max. Jeff offers these gifts to so many of the kids in the neighborhood–he shows no favorites– but to Max the attention means so much more than it does to the others–the ones with dads that are home and involved. To Max the attention he gets from Jeff is love, pure and simple, and it fills up the empty places in his heart–the ones left vacant by a father who chooses not to be around so much.
And so over the course of many months and over the span of more than a year, we have all given into this love Max has for Jeff. We have started to live into it, letting it carry us along like a river. Its opened up new ways of seeing for me. Its made the world a little sweeter…a little lighter. Its allowed me to really believe that others will help me shepherd Max into independence and awaken to the fact that I am just chief among his many guides. Its transformed me and Max and how we relate to our whole community.
Normally, we manage this dance quite gracefully–this ancient village parenting style. I sometimes feel like I am captain of TeamMax–the larger group of our community that is trying to help Max find his way in this world.
But other times we find ourselves tripping up and stomping on each other’s wounded toes. The boundaries don’t feel obvious or neat. Its so hard without the titles that define our relationships to guide us. The titles that establish the rules and give us comfort. Titles like “dad”. So I could see why Max was desperate to assign one to the member of his extended tribe he loves most.
But Max’s use of the word “dad” sent up a thousand red flags for me. Mostly it triggered a great fear that Max would now create suffering in the most positive male relationship in his life because he would suddenly attach unrealistic expectations to it, expectations that Jeff wouldn’t be able to fulfill. I wasn’t sure exactly what “dad” meant to Max–but I was sure that at least a few of those qualifications Jeff would never meet–no matter how much he loves Max and no matter how much Max wants him to play that role.
And so I set about trying to set him straight or as straight as one can set anyone on this crooked path called life and to help him see the reality of this unusual situation. And in the course of it what I learned is that really, what Max wanted, the foundation of his wish, was simply to know that he was loved, that he is dear to Jeff and always would be. He needed assurances that no matter what storms came floating through our life that Jeff would not stop loving him. The only way he knew how to ask for unconditional love was to use the word “dad”.
But in exploring it with him I also learned that he had, in using the adopting the word “dad”, already started to inadvertently attach a slew of expectations that might if he holds onto them too tightly leave him disappointed…without setting Jeff up to fail him.
Truth is, I don’t know how to put this we have for Jeff in any box with a label either. In a world where we “friend” practical strangers on Facebook and assure our spouses that someone doesn’t mean much to us by saying, “they are just a friend”, the word friend seems completely and utterly inadequate. Yet every other term out there that we search for ranges from vaguely inauthentic to downright untrue. He is neither uncle nor brother, dad nor partner, stepfather, half-father, or coach. In many ways he could act like any of these things to either of us at any moment but really at the most fundamental and basic ways none of these labels apply at all.
At another time in my life, this lack of definition could have been a matter of great frustration, but as I lay tossing and turning this morning, it dawned on me that it was nothing short of a gift. For the truth is, whenever love seems to fit neatly into cleanly labeled boxes, we all set ourselves up to fail and immediately open the door to unending disappointment and complete and utter doom.
How many hours have any of us spent in therapy trying to sort out suffering and grief because our mother or father didn’t live up to our expectations of “Mother” or “Father”? How many years of hurt and pain arise from partners who don’t behave as we think partners should? How many times have brothers or sisters disappointed us when they did not rise to the occasion of the title that was granted to them simply by the accident of shared parentage? How many times have we missed the gifts given to us by our loved ones simply because we were looking for something else? I don’t know about you, but for me the number runs into the thousands…
But Jeff with his big open heart that does not neatly fit anywhere offers us the opportunity to stay in this open space of no definition, to love without labels, without explanations and without the code-words that ultimately trip us up.
Why do we need to tame love with labels? Instead of trying to define Jeff and our affection for him by using words like friend, brother or dad, why not just let it be what it is…and not try and name it?
It certainly means messy moments as we stumble along without a map. We are going to need to work to define the boundaries instead of having some word lazily do it for us. What does it mean to play this nameless role in our “tribe”? What is appropriate and comfortable? We are going to have to draw these lines ourselves over and over again from scratch. We are setting out to explore uncharted terrain and are not playing by templates. This is hard enough for a 39 year old woman to do..can I ask my child to come along on this ride? But when considering the consequences, the thousands of missed opportunities, how could I not?
That is hard and scary and makes my stomach do all sorts of flips. It calls for nothing short of raw naked authenticity of the bravest kind. It calls for fearlessness and trust and for the willingness to see things, not as we want them to be but how they are. It calls for a willingness to let go of everything including our expectations and hopes of being loved back…yipes.
Yet, something tells me, if I can, if Max can, if we can somehow learn to navigate the path of our love for Jeff without labeling it, without metaphors or similes, we just might be able to do it in all our relationships…or at least in some of our relationships. We can undo some of the hurt that was caused when the people we labeled failed us by not living up to that label. We can let go of our need to put people in little boxes. And then maybe we can open a tiny space for love to flow more freely. And then maybe, just maybe the world will have space to breathe and to heal, just a tiny wee bit.
Or maybe we will just end up here where we started. Simply Exploring. Without a map.
1. Sitting on the edge of the the water and watching the sun set with a glass of wine in my hand.
2. Making tea in a copper kettle.
3. Feeling the arms of my beloveds around me.
4. Lighting candles at the dinner table.
5. Hearing the rain and the wind on the windows.
6. Being on the Eastern Shore with my favorite people.
7. Knowing that I will come home to Odette, home at last from the hospital.
8. The light. The light. The beautiful golden autumn light.
9. Hungarian mushroom soup.
10. The Pogues…oh and Freddie King.
11. Knowing I am loved. Deeply loved.
What about you? What is making your heart sing this weekend?
I have a friend who is in a lot of pain. He doesn’t want to admit it. I think that he believes that if he slows down to see it that something awful will catch up with him, that he might have to face it, that he might even have to bear it.
I see the grimaces that he tries to pass off as his everyday smiles but I know the difference and can feel the chilly winds settle in now in this autumnal time of grief. I feel the shift the way a farmer knows the snow is coming. His impatience is palpable. He shrugs off my hugs, my soft offers of care with the clang bang clang of a blacksmith forging a shield, protection I suppose, though from this angle is is hard to see what is so big that it needs to be kept outside our circle.
When I call him on the grief that appears to be leaking through the cracks in the wall he has so carefully constructed around his heart, he turns to leave. I am his bell calling his attention to the pain he so desperately wants to ignore. He would rather not see me, hear me, even know me now. He leaves me standing there with my empty arms, the ones that meant to shelter him, held open. He rejects all that is good about me when he turns to go. To accept the gift I offer, the balm that could soothe the sting, means opening to the very wound that he fears will slay him. I am dangerous.
Sometimes I’d like to leave him out there, in the valley of despair all by himself if that is what he wishes. I long to wave goodbye to him and get on with my day, escaping the ugly icky feeling of being rejected.
But long ago I made a promise. I made it even though he doesn’t remember. The fact he doesn’t remember does not release me from its solemn vow. I whispered it in childhood to him lifetimes ago when we were small. I told him I would not leave, no matter what.
And so I take those empty arms of mine and stay as he runs, and he throws himself into this and that, as he distracts his throbbing heart as convinces himself the throb is just his heartbeat, that it does not exist, that it is all just fine. And I stand, quietly, not too far away, hoping that when he is tired he will allow himself a rest at last and there I will be with a shoulder. Maybe he will see me then. And maybe he will let me kiss his pain and release it.
Or maybe not. Perhaps he will continue to pretend not to see me with my gentle, healer’s hands. Nevertheless I will not abandon him. I will stay. Even when he hates me, I will stay.
I will not leave him all alone, for he is me, and I am him and the healer and the hurt are the same.
For my sweet, wise vibrant healer woman who dwells inside. The ancient part of my soul who never leaves me even when I have run far away, even though I have ignored her love for years. An ode to her voice and her patience. An answer to her call.
Fragile and quiet and still. Like crisp morning air. Like the grass after a frost. Like a full moon reflecting off the fresh fallen snow. It could all be perfect. It could all fall apart. It is perfect and falling apart and perfectly falling apart again even as we breathe, now.
This is hallowed ground, this space. This is peace wrought. This is something other than the chatter and the noise. It is empty but not hollow. It is full but it is not filled.
The beat of an angel’s wings stirs the air and and the world has started spinning again. But I hold you here.
Always.
No matter what.
My dear friend Jenni is going into surgery this week. It is surgery she has dreamed about. It is surgery that may help her. It is surgery that may take her. I do not know how it will turn out but both of us trust that it will happen as it should as it needs to happen. My heart is so full this week. It is leaking and dripping and making quite a mess but a lovely mess as I reflect on the love that I learned from Jen. Send prayers.
Leaving the New Year dinner tonight, Max had a meltdown. He was crouched in the back of the car, on the floor, sobbing, his big boy seven year old body shaking from the force of his sorrow. He was crushed, laid out and completely undone because he was unable to hug our friend Jeff goodbye tonight. Jeff was busy helping with the cleanup and helping our hostess get her own kids upstairs to bed and so Max was rushed out of the house without his customary hug.
On an ordinary day, this might have been fine but Max is suffering from a cold that won’t go away. And he was up way past his bedtime. And he is feeling a little like the world is spinning out of control. Our dear Odette has been holed up in her room now for over a month, recovering from surgery and has been unable to play with him. There are rotting vegetables in the kitchen, and dirty dishes piled up very high in the sink. And all around him the adults are murmuring things about bailouts and stock accounts and layoffs and while he doesn’t know exactly what any of that is he is sensing that it is probably not good.
It is in moments like these that we most need to hold on to the ones who give us security, the ones who make us feel safe. We deeply long to be seen, to be hugged, to know that in the end, at least we have each other. Not in an intellectual way, but in a physical, real and tactile way.
I know what Max was feeling. These days, I am feeling a kind of new fragility that comes from being somewhat new. While it is generally good, there are moments when life, the sights and colors and bright lights and intense emotions can be a bit overwhelming. There are days when I am acutely aware of how little I understand, how little I can really grasp. And I am aware of how, like a newborn child, I have no words to explain it all to those around me. In these moments all I want to do is to crawl up into the lap of my loved ones. I want to be passed from one lovin’ set of arms to another. I don’t want to have to be big or grownup or understand about commitments. I want to be seen, and have that seeing acknowledged with real, tangible physical assurance. I need to know in a way that is neither intellectual or abstract that they are there. And when they can’t be, I can find myself in a metaphorical ball on the floor of the car.
It was for all these reasons that I was able to stifle my sighs and turn off the car and go inside to get Jeff. While it was true that Max would see Jeff tomorrow, and Wednesday and Friday too, the truth is sometimes, when it comes to love, all we have is now and promises of tomorrow aren’t enough. And while I hesitated a second, thinking that this was really just attention getting behavior it occurred to me that sometimes attention is really what is needed.
In the dark, Max crawled off the floor and into Jeff’s lap and lay a weary head on his shoulder. His little boy/big boy body relaxed out of the tight tight ball into a mushy kind of puddle. He was able to go, knowing that he was seen, that that seeing was real and that love finds a way, even out to the dark car.
And this not only comforted him but lifted him and made him laugh.
It made me laugh too as I turned to wrap my own arms around Jeff and just for a second lay my own head on his shoulder and breathed in the tangible, the solid, the real love that is my friend.
My dearest Jackie, who breaks all the rules, brought me a birthday gift tonight. This rockin’ Celtic T-shirt fits me like a glove, and resonates at exactly the same frequency of my little Irish soul. I am never taking this shirt off!
The words around the heart say: Like all things that are precious to us, we tend to keep our emotions under lock and key. Love itself is far too beautiful a gift not to share with everyone.
After a dinner of perfectly grilled kebabs, kick butt fish stew and the best carrot salad this side of north Africa, after a homemade ice cream cake that beat any other I have ever tasted, we sat in a circle and they, my beloved tribe helped me to create my list. My list of things to do before I turn forty. What’s beautiful about this exercise is that in adding an item to my list they pledged to do something (big or small) to help me get it done, to be my a co-conspirator, an angel to assist me, to hold my hands and jump feet first with me into the wild and messy river of my life.
In the spirit of love for them, in the spirit of my love for this life, I embrace this to do list, this plan. I hearby pledge to wrap my heart around these items and sink into the joyfulness of them.
- Take a kayak lesson on the Potomac
- Learn to throw a pot
- Perform at an open mic night
- Sing a duet with sweet Andy McD
- Learn to Irish step dance
- Go see Step Afrika
- Take Max to see Sweet Honey in the Rock
- Start to build my Goddess garden I have been dreaming of
- Paint my living room and hallway
- Create (and dare I say perfect) a gluten-free pizza dough recipe. (Homemade pizza and Eric’s homemade bread are the only two things that will tempt me off my healthy gluten free path. This gets me 50% of the way there! )
- Explore acupuncture and my calling as a healer
- Start that girls’ (age 8-11) knitting club I have been talking about
- Ride a roller coaster
- Stay a night at the Purple Fiddle
- Learn to swim
- Run a 10K
- Learn to count to ten in three African languages
- Finally master the f’in F chord
- Teach Max to knit (my sweet boy added this to my list, saying he would help by doing the learning!)
- Go out to hear live music at least ten times (this is an easy one which just makes me feel productive!)
- Figure out how to live migraine free
Wanna jump in with me? What do you think I might do in this crazy wild messy year before I turn 40? Lets do it together.
Maxidoodle hugging Stephen: Because he is brilliant, because he is my friend, because he would be flattered for me to post a photo of him on my blog, because he gave me inspiration for my perfect birthday present…
My 39th birthday is just a week away. Thirty-nine feels big and heavy, more so than even 40. Perhaps because it is a “last”–the last year I will be in my thirties. I relish being in my thirties. Thirty-something felt like the perfect age–young enough but still perfectly grown-up. The lesson of the last years have been poignant and real and messy and wonderful. This last decade has been an amazing adventure. It was like nothing I expected and yet I landed exactly where I needed to be. I love being thirty-something–I admit it and truth be told, I am mourning letting this decade go. And while I am still 12 months away from that inevitable moment, I find myself sighing and imagining how it will be to have a year of lasts. Just like I faced my senior year of college wistfully, knowing it would be my last as a full-time relatively irresponsible student, I feel I am embarking on the last year of a decade so sweet. I know that there is nothing to be gained by holding onto this past, but I am still feeling strangely well…wistful.
I think that this wistfulness is highlighted because I feel like I am standing on sort of threshold, in some sort of transition, as though I am on the verge of some big kind of shift in my life and it just happens to be happening at the end of this decade. Perhaps that’s why 39 feels so big and heavy to me. My age has become a symbol for me–of being at the end of something and at the start of something else. It feels like that last leg of this journey before a new one will start. And maybe I am feeling a little afraid. And a little bit as though I want to cling to something comfortable, even something as crazily comfortable as my age.
Yesterday, on our way out to get lunch I shared this with my friend and brother Stephen. We were talking about the little dinner party that my friend Cathy is throwing for me next week. Stephen can’t keep secrets and has shared with me every bit of news he gets about the affair. I told him about how this birthday feels so pivotal to me. I shared with him why. I told him that it feels like one last dance of being thirty-something (for whatever that means). Stephen is well past thirty-something so he rolled his eyes at me but one of the reasons I love him so is that he gets me so deeply and fundamentally. He recognized my need for ritual not ridicule.
I expected him to make fun of my youthful silliness and to tell me to get over myself. But instead he was thoughtful. “Since you feel this way,” he remarked, “you need to honor it and celebrate it…go with it–don’t fight it” And then he got excited.
We had been talking about how I didn’t want presents for my birthday but about how Cathy had mistakenly emailed them all that I did want presents which he thought was bold and brave and refreshing–so much so that when she corrected the email and told them that I DIDN’T want presents, he was terribly disappointed. He has been on the quest to get me to ask for a present ever since.
“Aha,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “I KNOW what we can do for you. Its a perfect non-present present you can ask for AND it will help mark this pivotal year.”
“You need to task us all with coming up with coming up with 40 things we are going to commit to help you do/experience/see or live before you turn 40. We need to be your conspirators during this year of transition. That can be our present to you. “ What a lovely idea for the keeper of lists… I wear my dreams on my sleeve. I keep my list of 100 things to do before I die pinned to my desk. Every year I make my Mondo Beyondo list and share it shamelessly with anyone who is interested.
We both stood in the September sunshine for a second and basked in the brilliance of his idea about the perfect birthday present.
“For instance…you want to skydive–who is going to volunteer to go with you?” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes at him. Stephen is sometimes as insane as he is brilliant. I am going no where near an open door of any plane. “OK, OK…maybe not skydiving. But you get my point. And we can help you. We can suggest amazing adventures or things you might not even think of…And you don’t have to do it all if you don’t want…you can CHOOSE what to do but the point is it can be a year of no excuses because you will have help in getting it done.”
I love this idea. The idea of making this last year of my thirties about choosing how live lusciously, full and bravely with the help of my friends and community. I love it so much I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I wonder what kind of good habits will it spawn and support–a habit of choosing adventure, a habit of asking for help, a habit of not waiting until a better time, a habit of living in the present instead of the future, a habit of saying WHY NOT NOW?
And so I told Cathy to correct her email once again and to hint about the present I wanted most.
And I throw this open to you my friends, those who stop by here and who have listened to the whispers of my heart…Can you contribute to this present? Do you have a suggestion for me and are you willing to be my conspirator if I wish to follow through on your idea? If you want to help…leave a comment here or email me at meg (at) megcasey (dot) com. Next week on my birthday (or maybe the day after) I will share my list (created by Stephen and our gang along with all of you) here. I can’t wait to unwrap this one!
