Glass of tequila on the table, just a squeeze of lime and two ice cubes. Glass of tequila and an orange cat sprawled on my lap. Work clothes still on, even the sandals, moving through the evening not a moment to change. Oh look, there is a stain on my dress. My glow-stick bracelet from a favored child’s birthday still glows bright orange–a color of canned sunshine.
The humid air thick with the smell of French soaps brought as a gift from a Paris summer weekend while I walked a dog in the heat. Some of the lights have burned out. Shadows hit the walls in interesting ways. I could watch them dance all night if I wanted–me and my glass of tequila, with the cat on my lap.
But sleep is coming fast unless I keep writing and then sleep will never come. Blow out the candles on the altars–trust that angels or altar gnomes will keep my prayers while I sleep. Close the computer. Stop now. Stop now. Stop.
That sometimes the most beautiful innocence can be born from deep suffering, desperation and ugliness
That nothing is ever one thing and even the most exquisite joy and breathtaking beauty can be punctuated by sadness and loss and even the most heartbreaking grief can be tinged with a rosy kindness
That laughter and silliness and ridiculousness is sometimes the only answer to heaviness
That my heart will whisper to me exactly what I must do next
That angels most certainly must exist
That I have sisters who I will walk with and they will not leave me and I will not leave them because our paths are intertwined whether we like it or not (though we mostly like it)
That love (not sappy silly love by lionness roaring love) is alchemical — it is the magic ingredient and while it sounds so trite its true
That the youngest among us are extremely powerful and hold all the wisdom that we forgot
That miracles are like tsunamis and leave disasterous messiness in their wake and it is a saint’s job to clean up what comes behind, physically hold the wounded together to sutcher their souls.
Saints also bring lemon cake and stand on chairs tip toe to hang paper hearts from the ceiling
My heart is feeling both full and heavy today after standing with my arms spread wide open in a thunderstorm and letting the rain pour down. I would love to know what you know now–let our collective wisdom carry us.
Standing on the edge of the pool I am blown away by these kids, the ones who swim like lightning, the ones who make it all seem so effortless, and the ones that struggle through and push hard. The ones whose googles fall off and keep going anyway, the ones who shave seconds off their time. I never could do anything like that when I was a child and so their movement, their ease, their courage, their dedication, their endurance seems magical to me and at the end of every event, I want to celebrate them, jump up and down, kiss them on the head and bless them–exclaim to the world that they are a miracle.
Instead, I tell them their time as they climb out of the pool and whisper something like “great swim”, “that rocked”, “great focus”. The quiet encouragement is what they need right then, as they make off to celebrate or lick their wounds or jump up and down and scream their heads off for their teammates. So I tell them their time and sneak in a silent blessing, a quiet alleluia for their growing up, their personal victory.
This swim is something that is theirs alone.
No parent, or teacher, coach or teammate pulled them along or won for them. But man, how they all did yell.
It is gorgeous to watch them, the kids lined up along the deck, screaming and cheering for each other. They hover behind me, their teammates, and they say things like, “wow–best time ever” to the kid who came in last, the one who is improving steadily steadily week after week. Every kid is made to feel a rock star, a prize fighter, a hero in the moment of their struggle. It makes my heart swell to think of all they are learning. To think of how kindness and encouragement flow like water here. To think that this is the real strength training, here at the poolside.
Every personal battle is just one swimmer in a pool–moving as gracefully as she can. Hoping to keep it together, do a little bit better than last time. He is racing against himself. No one can do it for her. No one else will make or break this for him. And yet he knows that the cheers, the yells, the high fives and the hand to pull her out of the pool are what keep her going hard. The team and their love–it is what allows each swimmer to pull the strength out of his belly and do one more stroke.
Falling asleep, drifting fading in and out. It is then, only then I remember. Sweet voice I hear you and then you are gone, faded into the night like a whisper of a dream sequence, like mist that rode in and then dissolved, blown away by quiet heavy air that came in when we weren’t looking.
Disappeared.
I can smell the spring chill now, feel the perfume on my skin, it lingers to tell me that once upon a time I knew you, once upon a time long ago. The memory of you is left like a footprint. But no embodiment or ripeness to wrap my fingers around, no door on which to rap, no.
Waking to a memory of a memory of a memory–a reflection in a glassy pond in summer’s fading light at 9 o’clock in the evening as the frog’s croak out their love songs, by a gas station with an ancient stationwagon under sharp florescent lights which reflect the fumes and turn pretty girls into stone, by a hotel room on a country road an hour before curfew, in a driveway, bold girl wandering out in the night to say good bye and not let you leave not let you leave not let you leave. Curl my fingers around yours, drop my keys, not let you leave.
Having declared that I was going to show up here and write no matter what I find myself in a bit of a bind.
Umm…now what?
Perhaps I thought that that simple declaration would inspire brilliance? Perhaps I thought that if I simply pronounced it, the writing would come. Today, the very first day out of the box I am showing up here with no wisdom, no happy endings and certainly no magical stories. Damn.
Today Max is with his dad and so I don’t have to rush home after my paid work and jump into my work life as a mother and so I promised myself I would sit here for at least 20 minutes. As the day started to come to its close I thought of 100 or so different reasons that I really needed to just get going–errands that needed being run, chores that needed to be completed. I promised myself I would write tonight after Max went to sleep, after my guitar lesson…later.
Its amazing all the ways in which we sabotage ourselves, isn’t it?
I am wondering what THAT is all about? And what is the thing that underlies it all? Is it fear? Fear of what happens? Or fear that if I dropped all my excuses I would show up, naked (figuratively–I AM still at the office afterall) and be revealed for what I am–which is not quite a fraud, but also perhaps “not all that“? Maybe I might discover that when I eliminate all the excuses I am just Uninspired? I think about that a lot you know.
I know…I know…its silly. If any of you wrote or spoke those words aloud, I would be the first one in line to kick your butt. I am just saying.
Cause you know, what the hell do I have to say? I am just a girl. I value kindness. I love my kid. I love to play but can take things way too seriously too. I have known deep personal pain–though I am awed at how in the scheme of things how easy I have gotten off (knocking on wood now). My life has taught me a thing or two but its not new wisdom–really ancient wisdom–the kind of wisdom that the ancestors sort of hit their foreheads over while muttering things like “You just figured that one out Einstein…Duh…Kids today”. Most of the time I think I have shared all that I have learned, all that I know, my hour is over, time to get back to the chores.
I am not doing anything all that big or scary or Meaningful (with a capital M) right now. On some of my projects I am moving forward with the tiniest of baby steps and nothing new to report. Others seem terribly stalled. Along those lines, fitting my life into my life is a challenge and the only thing I hate more than that fact is the fact that I actually think that way. That for all my talk about being present, for all my embracing of now, for all the joy I can find in the smallest moment, I still think my life (the life I want) is still out there somewhere. That I love the life I have but that other life–the one I am moving too–well I am going to love THAT life so much more…
OK. Confessional closed.
In the interest of wrapping up here I will simply share this:
Five Things I Know:
1. Fresh picked lettuce tastes so much better than store bought.
2. Lemonade is much better if you shove a handful of mint in the bottle and let it sit a day or two.
3. Constantly editing myself to be the good girl is a bad habit. Its a challenging one to break. Its exhausting.
4. I could really use a hug today. Not because I am sad, or lonely or any reason like that. Just cause I like hugs. More than the average person I think.
5. I need to exercise more. Really. I’m not kidding. I saw a picture of me timing at Max’s swim meet today and I said, “Oh who is that super cute pregnant girl with the pigtails? I don’t remember seeing her on Saturday.” And then I realized it was me. And I’m not pregnant. (But at least I am super cute.)
I have a friend who thinks that blogs are just public diaries. Every time she says that (in a way that I know is a not too veiled question of what I do here) I want to stomp my feet in protest. There is a lot of mighty fine writing that happens in our bloglandia–a lot of powerful stuff in raw and polished form.
But, to some extent she speaks truth. There is a lot that gets posted here and on other blogs that feels very much the stuff of journals. There is a certain recording of our lives that happens here, a marking it down, lest it be forgotten. A turning it into words so that we can better make some meaning out of it. A cleansing because sometimes writing about something just makes it feel so much better and why not here?
I suppose someone could say that all writing is in some way, a public diary. It all starts with using words to illuminate a piece of our souls–whether we call it fiction or memoir whether we claim “it really happened” or we just imagine it did. Telling a story, playing with truth, juggling words–if we are honest it all starts in a vulnerable place and with an idea or thought or feeling or neurosis that is all our own. I can see the truth in what she says and hold in my head that she is absolutely right and also hold in that same space the truth that there is some mighty fine writing going on on my favorite blogs.
But truth be told, I know that I get so defensive when I hear blogs (and especially my blog! Oh my!) described that way, because I want to think I am above keeping a diary for the world. I want my writing to be more than the verbal vomit that I always associated with my writing at the time I kept volume after volume of my deepest secrets scrawled in angry, melodramatic rambling prose in black and white bound notebooks.
I want my writing to mean something. I want my writing to have made order out of chaos. I want my writing to point to something true. I want my writing to be–well–beautiful.
I love my blog because this is a place to practice–a verbal sketch book. I write about my life because its here, in front of me. I write about my life because its really the only thing I know to be true. I write about my life, for the same reasons I read voraciously because stories help me rise above the weeds and muck and blurry close up view of my life to a height where I can see the pattern, sense a meaning. It may read like a diary but it is so much more. It is a place to play with words based writing about the stuff that I know best. Its just that.
When I first had my blog I played a lot more. Made lists. Rambled. Posted pictures. But it has changed as I got more serious and as my writing matured and as I discovered that every now and then someone reads this thing. I think a lot about what I write here because you (yes you!) come here and I want so much to delight you and I don’t want to waste your time.
In this way my blog has become a metaphor for something I am struggling with–(hello diary!) living unedited. I have noticed in recent weeks how I can still slip into the bad habit of dialing myself back to be nice, polite, or to fit into what is expected. Worse yet, I find myself holding myself back until the “final draft”. Living in the messy space of being unpracticed has been a, well, practice for me and yet, the deeper I dig in, the more I see where I am holding myself (and my me–ness) back. And my writing and my creativity is just one of those spaces.
Truth is, I don’t write to be good. I don’t write to be considered talented or brilliant or even somewhat interesting. I don’t write for any other reason other than that words matter and stories matter and telling them is good for my heart. They don’t have to be neat or perfect or even stories, do they?
I worry a bit, about what would happen if every day I showed up here and just wrote. Wrote without a point or without a neat ending or even without prose. What would happen if I wrote simply for the joy of playing with words and saw what happened when I arranged them this way. You might stop coming here. You might even call this space a “public diary” Thinking about it makes me sad. But I am willing to take the risk because write now I am practicing living in a deeper, more authentic way and this seems like a good space to do that in.
July is going to be a little experiment. What would happen if I just got here and wrote without a finished piece in mind. It might all be crap. Maybe you should set your alarm clocks for August. We will see.
I just saw this new film at the Silverdocs film festival, which miraculously takes place within walking distance from my house.
I wept out of joy, out of horror, out of the beauty that comes from brokenness, out of what happens when we attempt something crazy and magical–just because. What happens when we take risks. It comes out in October. Go see it. It just might change your life.
The day we landed in Mexico for the first time, we sat in the formal living room in the Mexico City house, cooled by one solitary fan and drank cold coca colas on sticky vinyl covered couches. My legs, made bare by my pretty little sundress stuck to the plastic and I looked longingly at the plush velvet beneath the clear barrier. “Protection”, Juan leaned over and whispered to me, reading my mind. “When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.”
From my perch on my plastic velvet throne something magical caught my eye. In a living room that was rather sparse, a simple table, a lamp nothing more, the corner exploded in decoration. A waist high table was filled with fresh flowers, plastic flowers, candles burning despite the sun which bleached out the room, red beaded lamps, pictures of saints in gilded frames, ancient toys, figurines carved out of wood and stone. I got up and wandered over, mesmorized. Juan followed me and touched me on the shoulder. “It’s my tia’s altar”, he said. I had never seen anything so gaudy and so beautiful.
Before we left to travel to Oaxaca, Juan’s tia called us over to the altar for our blessing. She pulled out a fresh candle and lit it with ceremony, laid her tiny hands on our heads towering above her. She said prayers for a safe journey and with the saint’s protection firmly in place, she finally let us go out of her watchful sight. When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.
I was swept up in the mystery of this magical country, I would soon call my second home. I loved, and became a student of the altars I saw built everywhere–in businesses, by roadside stands, in formal rooms and in the corner of shacks. A place for the Virgin to watch over and bless all who labored, loved and lingered there. Yet, the altars struck me as charmlng, antiquated, habits of old ladies with time on their hands, connections to a superstitious fate-based culture, a culture where angels and demons made choices instead of people and gods were arbitrary and mean in how they doled out joy and pain.
When I saw little altars constructed by friends of mine back home, I thought of them as glorious art pieces. A showcase of spirituality. I thought they were things constructed like window dressing to declare one’s love of God. I didn’t judge them, I was enthralled, in love, caught up in them. But I saw them as “extras” as “statements” as artful expression.
That was until the bottom fell out, after that night when Juan whispered to me that he was leaving me. That was until I was plunged head first into the realization that all my expecations and illusions about how my life would play out were dashed.
Night after sleepless night, I found myself whispering prayers in the dark to my tia’s Virgencita, the only woman who I thought might be able to hold my pain. Anxious hands, flitted about while my words poured forth, as though the very emotions, heart breaking needed to make themselves real and physical. One night I woke up and I stumbled into the living room. I suddenly remembered my sister in law, constructing her “Day of the Dead” altar for her young daughter, creating a space to grieve and honor her short life, to give thanks to her children who lived. Old toys and pieces of birthday cake and candy–a celebration of her life, an acknowledgment of her death, a pleading for the safety of her remaining three children.
And suddenly I understood what drove her to create her altar each year–what mad forces drove her forward through tears and turmoil as she laid the table cloth and arranged each item. I found the handthrown clay Virgen de Assumption I had purchased from a local potter in Oaxaca, moved her off her spot in the background of a shelf on a waist high table. I scrambled for a tea light. With a flashlight I went outside and cut wilting flowers from my garden, shoving them into a jelly glass. I found a picture of Juan and I happy and smiling and full of love and hope and bursting with joy at each other’s presence. With tears streaming down my face, I wrote a letter to sweet gods and goddess whoever would listen, imploring them to save my marriage, or at very least to protect my child, my heart, my sense that I would be OK. I thought about all of us flayed and bleeding. My heart whispered to me: When something is this precious, we can’t afford to leave it unprotected. And then I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke, I arose with a new peace. I had found a place to park my grief, to concentrate my dream, to make sacred my worst fears and deepest desires. And suddenly, I had found the strength to go on and to bear life as it unfolded, however it unfolded.
In the last six years, I have constructed countless altars. I take them down and refresh them frequently. When I am going through transition or transformation, their creation guides me. They are not art or window dressing or decoration. They are not a statement about my belief in god. They are a survival skill. An anchor. A thing I do so that I can keep going, despite the chaos and uncertainty and pain and messiness that I experience day after day living life on the edge. I currently have four in my house. Each one is place to hold my fears, my dreams, to learn to trust. I have one dedicated to my community, another to my tenuous and turmoil filled relationship with God and the Universe, my doubts about Her/His intentions, my questions and struggles. I have one dedicated to following my path–where I can park those fears that come up when I listen to my heart. And I have one, tucked away in my bedroom which hardly anyone ever sees, my most private space where my heart dwells. Each one is a place where I can acknowledge, grieve and celebrate. Where I can concentrate my prayers and honor the fears that try to protect me. Each night I light the candles. And then, I can say to my fears, the ones who try and protect me from life’s sorrow. “Stay here and rest, my loves. I must go out and bear life without you in the way.”
On Monday, a young teenage friend of mine set off for the journey of a lifetime. Headed to Rwanda to follow his path, I know his tender heart will see and experience both extraordinary beauty and pain. His mother, so strong, swallows her worry and speaks out loud over and over why this trip is good for him. I too, find myself thinking of him constantly, my prayers of protection, my pleas that he will find mentors to help him process what his tender heart experiences rising up and clouding my thoughts. Sunday night as I wandered through the grocery store, I passed the Latino section and saw the guardian angel candles–the very same ones with their paper wrappers and baroque images of an fair haired angel guiding a child that my tia places on hers whenever we set off from Mexico. The very same ones she lights when we leave her. I bought two, and placed the first on my community altar.
Monday morning, bright and early, I walked to my friend’s house. His parents just back from the airport were upbeat but strains of anxiety showed around their eyes. “This may be corny,” I said “but I brought a candle. To protect your boy. Its a space to hold the fear I know you have. I have one burning in my house for him too.” Furiously we searched for matches and lit it, said a little prayer and then went on with our day. Parking our grief and our worry so we could move on, but knowing full well that our hearts’ love had been concentrated and sent out like a magical golden net to protect him while he walked his new tightwire. When something is this precious we can’t afford to leave it unprotected.
For my dear friends E and K who reminded me this week why I build my altars.
Update: As I finished this sentence my friend just appeared with her phone in hand so I could read the email her son had sent, describing a land that had already captured his heart. I am in tears with joy. If you keep an altar would you light a little candle on yours for a boy, so brave, so wise and so connected to his heart that he left his comfortable life here at 16 to answer the call to love? May he be held up and protected and carried through the countryside by hundreds of prayerful hearts.
I have taken the week off of work with week. Our babysitter is away visiting her family. This is not when we normally take our vacation–we hold out for cousins week each August. So instead, of using the week to escape my life, I am using it to delve more deeply into it. To do all the things I wished I could do if I wasn’t so occupied by my paid work. I have been anticipating it juicily. I feel I put off so much of my life while i am living it.
So often this last month, while battling against the assault of the end of the school year (with its performances, and picnics and celebrations and ceremonies) I would dreamily say, “I will get to THAT when it is all over and I take my week off”. I had a long list of chores, projects, playdates, and fun.
I had a bit of a panic as the week approached–as Friday signaled that “the week” had finally arrived. As I did the math, I had no idea how I would get it all done. Like a general, I pulled out spreadsheet and organized my time into neat little blocks.
But still it didn’t calm me. I was so afraid that the time would slip by and I would have missed it, missed my chance, missed my moment. Missed my juicy life. Missed my opportunities to delve deeply into all that I had put off until “just the right time”. Does this sound familiar?
So I made my schedule (because as we all know routine is soothing and good for children and adults alike), and then reminded myself that as long as I lived deeply in every moment I would have lost or missed nothing.
I am having to do a lot of reminding of myself. This week I am learning that no matter how wise I pretend to be, I can’t shake that habit of imagining a time in the (hopefully) not to distant future, when I will finally get it right, when a bell will ring, when the curtains will part and I will arrive at my perfect life. (I had somehow convinced myself that that time MIGHT just be at the conclusion of my week off).
Once upon a time I could have rattled off to you exactly what it would look like when I finally made it–about the job and the kids and the state of the house. Truth is, over the last 5 years that vision has gotten pretty muddied, but still, I can’t quite shake the feeling that some magical moment is right around the corner and when I turn it, my happily ever after will start.
I am (she says withe relief) no longer attached to one vision of how it might look, but still, there is still that striving, that sense that I am on my way somewhere and it will be my reward for the pain and the struggle and the heartache and all the soul work.
I have a mentor and soul sister named Kaiya. Whenever I mutter that “I am getting there” as I talk about my life she sits up very tall and looks at me very sternly. “There is no THERE baby girl.” she tells me. “There is no magical moment. The reward for doing your soul work is more soul work. The reward for eating healthily is craving more good food. The reward for learning to unconditionally love, messy and complicated people is another glorious day relating and learning from the same messy and complicated people. There is no “aha” moment when it will all make sense. So stop waiting for that moment and jump in. Thats it. Be here in this moment. In a comfortable room with a pleasant view. Sitting with someone you love. Talking about stuff that matters. Talking about stuff that is silly. This is it. This is your life. Its a good life. Enjoy it.”
OK. Thats great. I can sit and enjoy my life in slow motion. I have mastered the art of “letting it all hang out”. I have eased into being–just in a space and time, which is great. Except for when things need to be done. Except for when there are steps to take that may be hard or complicated and demand a lot of energy.
Its so hard for me to be action oriented but in the present. Isn’t that nutty? I am good at simply sitting in the moment, but I am so unpracticed at the idea of moving forward and taking action without any story about that action carrying me somewhere–without the belief that that action will help me somehow arrive. I find that I am either all blissed out in the now on my cushion or sitting in the sunshine or sitting with a good friend and tea or tequila or wrapped up in my down comforters with a great book. But doing things I need to do, that are scary and hard work–stuff like doing art, or writing something longer than a blog post, or taking steps to get to school–doing them for the sake of them, without a sense that they are worthy because they signal some implicit arrival. Doing them simply because they need to be done. That is so difficult.
This week, I painted my kitchen. Once upon a time I never would have gotten started with a painting project like this because it would have been wrapped up in a vision of a perfect house. I would have done the calculus and seen that week or even a few hours is not enough time to arrive at what I wanted and so I would have given up before even starting, paralyzed by what it would take to arrive. I decided I would just practice painting for the sake of it–with no attachment to a beautiful kitchen, or even a neat kitchen. I found it soothing and soulful and restful. I find that I am making progress step by baby step. I am painting my kitchen because it wants to be green. Not because I have any story about a clean kitchen or a beautiful kitchen or even about a kitchen that will be orderly or calm or in which I will live a more beautiful cleaned up version of my current life.
Its a balance that is complicated to find. Just like all the unpracticed people before me, I am failing more than I am succeeding but I am using this week, with its scheduled blocks of time and its chores and its wide open spaces to practice the art of realizing that I have indeed already arrived. With every breath I arrive over and over again.
From my perch on the sidelines, I am amazed how everyday you are different. The little boy who once was afraid of the deep end is now leaping in a rainbow arch playing sharks and minnows with the middle schoolers. The bow backed stand, arms crossed, goggles atop your head. I am a perpetual witness to this miracle, your life so full and so not defined by me.
Your freckles are mine, your fine Irish skin, but your life amazes me, shocks me, is so different from mine. And I know that with each day that passes, your life will be more and more a mystery. The code you speak, the language of boys, your posture, your stance. The way you move through the water, across the ice, on a field–such a mystery to me who trips over her own shadow and runs from a ball. Once upon a time, I knew every boo-boo, every scrape, every hurt feeling and could understand the storms of your moods. Once upon a time you came to me for answers and accepted what I said, but now you are certain I have no idea how things are–and to some extent you are right. I know nothing of sports and boys who play them. I can’t tell you how to shoot a puck better or how to slice a second of your backstroke. I am flummoxed about what to say to the team ball-hog, to the playground bully you stand up to.
And yet there are still, those holiest of moments, often in the evenings, or during a thunderstorm, when your wrap your arms around me, and ask me if I can keep a secret, and the sweet sorrow in your tender heart comes pouring out and I know you are still my baby boy, and that I am still the one who knows the landscape of your heart. While the details are fuzzy, I know the contours, the hills and valleys and know where the land is scarred and where it is more forgiving. And in those moments you and I remember that what I know is about being broken and being human, and falling apart and trying again and being human and loving and kind. And that really it is al that matters. I pray each day that you will continue to trust my broken mama self and know that this is a safe space to just be. I trust I will always be a keeper of your heart or the safe place where you come to be.
But for for now your being is in the water, at the pools edge, or in the snack shack and begging me not to take photos. For now your being is wrapped in a green towel looking for a ping pong partner, carrying a tupperware container of coins you saved up to buy junk food, loaning a dime to the big kids, wondering if it will buy you something more. For now your being is wrapped up in the learning that you can no longer learn from me, except when in broken failure (or something that feels like that) you sneak into my lap when no one is looking and whisper my name and time, the time that is flying by, stops still for you and me.
