Memorial day weekend found me on the nature path with Norah, my friend’s 5 year old daughter. We had read a pamphlet about how to tell the difference between the vegetation eaten by rabbits and deer. By looking at the angle of how the leaves and branches are broken, we could tell whether bunnies or Bambis had wandered through. It was fun to stoop down and walk that path with that new perspective.
Every few feet we would proclaim: Rabbit! Rabbit! More Rabbits! Deer!
I never realized how broken the forest is. She looks so lush and full but close down, she is trampled and snapped and broken.
She is a mama, giving it all to feed her babes. Stripped of her sweetest leaves, her most tender branches. She willingly offers them up to keep life living. But she looks so whole, so put together, so complete. if it wasn’t for the looking so closely, we would have thought she was bursting forth with green, overflowing with abundance. We wouldn’t have known about the broken parts. Yet, there, in the shadows, if we look closely we see it, stripped branch after stripped branch. Little bare and frazzled parts. All because she cared. She offered herself up.
We too are mothers broken out of that same love. To the outside we may appear completely complete, all together. But we are frayed and frazzled and stripped of our most tender leaves. We give everything to nurture those we love. We give because we can. We open ourselves up to be chewed up: By our children, by our spouses, by our friends. We bear it because because we exist for them.
But all that giving, well it leaves us a bit broken. Most of us would never trade it for any price. We love to love, even though it leaves us a bit frayed. And selfishly we do it because we know.
We know what I saw is also true. That those bushes that were broken last week, are growing stronger. Where one branch was sheared, two strong supple green stems have appeared.
We allow ourselves to be broken, because it feeds our loved ones. We allow ourselves to be broken because it can push us to grow in new directions. We allow it because it is part of being human, of being a woman, of being love personified.
Sometimes I think it is as much hard work to be divorced as it is to be married. Both require that you come in close intimate contact with your worst and your best selves.
I have my stories that I tell about why my marriage ended. They are all true. But they are not entirely complete. Until recently I found it convenient to leave out many of the bits about all I did to stress that relationship. I leave them out because its uncomfortable to admit these things. I leave them out because that means I can pretend that my divorce is something that happened to me, instead of something I actively created. Its easier and neater to be the victim, the good wife who got left. I suppose its an easier and simpler story to tell it.
Secretly though I have owned those ugly stories. I had to. I knew my divorce would be a whole heap of pain for nothing if I didn’t at least explore them, didn’t at least explore all the ways we got to this place and ask myself, what I could possibly learn.
For years at night I would wake up unable to sleep, the litany of all the things I had done to destroy what I loved so dearly running through my mind. There were nights I blamed myself. I fixated on my temper, my impatience, my resentment. There were other nights I railed against the injustice. Sure I was difficult, but it was no reason to leave me. Sure I could be a pain in the ass, but lets talk about what he did to provoke it! Some nights I wallowed in how wrong I was, others in how right I was.
And then one day I gave up with all this need to be right (and wrong). I simply was. It dawned on me that there is no right or wrong in something as complicated as marriage. There are just two wounded people, doing the very best they can. We bump up against each others sharp bits. We cause pain. We hurt. We soothe each other, delight each other, bore each other, infuriate each other. We push buttons–either by accident or on purpose. Sometimes we come through it. Sometimes we simply cannot stay. At very best we can hope to learn something from each other from all these interactions. We can gain some wisdom about ourselves. We might chose to stay the same,or chose to grow and change. There is no right or wrong, no fault or blame to be doled out. It just is. And in that recognition is a world of freedom and forgiveness.
The minute I stopped with the blame, I began to forgive–not just Juan, but myself for all that had transpired. Knowing that we were two people just trying to do our best, failing miserably every day, getting up and trying again, suddenly made it all redeemable.
There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.–Leonard Cohen
I have been reflecting a lot in the last few weeks on my humanity. That sounds like a truly self-absorbed thing to write. Staring at it now, I wonder if there is any other way to write it, (please let there be another way to say this) but there isn’t.
The truth is I am flawed and messy. My failings are numerous.
There are the small things like I am terrible at making my bed. I still throw my clothes on the floor when I am getting ready for bed at night. I don’t exercise enough and I rarely eat my vegetables without an internal mother urging me on. I have other flaws that are quite ironic. For instance, I have been known to judge people for being too judgey. And then there are the big ones–the fears, the failures, the neuroses and crazinesses. The ugly parts of myself I wish no one would ever need to see.
There are times when I like to imagine myself on some sort of journey toward self-improvement. I look toward the moment when I will master patience, kindness and compassion fully and glow with some sort of inner knowing. I imagine a clean house, a fashionable wardrobe, a blog that is updated. I dream of a time when I will no longer be afraid of leaping or taking risks and when having figured it all out, everything is effortless. If I only do my lessons, and take each step earnestly I will somehow get to that holy place and I will win some sort of prize or get a tiara or angels will sing. And life will be easy.
Do you ever experience that?
And every time I think I am getting close to that place, the universe will slam me and remind me that there is no there to get to. That each day we simply wake up and do the best we can. Over and over again. Maybe in the process of making so many mistakes or in getting hurt we learn something and emerge wiser, but everything gained leads to new questions, new beginnings.
But these days I am intrigued with the concept of brokenness. And of how those cracks let the light in. I am declaring June a month to reflect on that here.
And I want to hear your stories. Desperately. Send me a note at meg (at) megcasey (dot) com if you have a story to share or leave a link to it in the comments here.
Somethings are as true today as they were years ago. This is a re-post , an oldie but goodie, an ode to a friend who has remained constant despite the ways that life has tossed us each around. He is still walking through the door, playing his music, goofing around with my boy, making his bad jokes and teaching me about faith in the most unlikely of ways. From May 12 2008. Happy Birthday dear friend. I am so happy you were born.
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.
Things have been silent over here while I shift into a new space, a new yin and quiet place. It is a good thing to learn to be receptive. So many ideas run through my brain these days on wonderful things to write about. Fear not, when the time is ripe I will write again. I am not blocked. Just in a silent place.
But one of the joys of being in that yin receptive space is being able to notice, see and express gratitude for all the small and simple things in life. Like a great teacher. So when I saw this post over at PBS Supersisters on their Day of Gratitude I couldn’t resist breaking the silence and posting.
I want to take a few minutes to talk about a teacher who made a huge difference in my son’s life. A tiny Chinese woman who taught Max last year in first grade. Ms Cai. She had a reputation as a strict teacher. To be honest, Max quaked in fear the day he learned he had her for first grade. He had heard she would push him and that scared him. But after the first day of class everything changed. First grade would be a magical year.
Not too long into the school year, Max told me, “Mom, I feel like Ms Cai has been my teacher for a thousand years.” He said it with such earnestness that I knew it to be true. Max’s reading soared in first grade. For one reason and one reason only. Ms Cai believed in him. She told him every day. She told him how smart he was. She told him he could catch up to the kids in the top reading group. She never said things like, “if you try harder” or “if you do more”. Sure she encouraged him to work but she never ever gave him the impression he was lacking anything. She just said he would learn and grow simply by being himself. His wonderful self. And he did. He rose to her every expectation.
Ms Cai taught Max and his classmates how to give oral presentations, how to stand up with confidence and speak like a pro and give a book report. She taught him how to connect with his audience, how to fake it even if he was scared. She taught him to believe that everything he had to say was fascinating and interesting and something that every child in the room needed to know.
Ms Cai made a big deal out of it when Max defended the new girl on the playground. Even though there was a price to pay, in terms of teasing from the mean kids when he stood up for her, Ms Cai taught him that what he did was not simply “kind” but “heroic” and he never forgot how she made him feel extraordinary for being so brave.
Ms Cai reflected back at Max all the good things he is. She was a mirror for him. He was appreciative, kind, smart, creative, loving and he knew it every day because this powerful tiny loving woman made sure he knew.
This year Max has a wonderful teacher who has opened up a whole new world of literature to him. He is in a reading group of one and there they talk about great books, as well as what he is doing in the school mandated primer. But he still talks about Ms Cai and misses her terribly. He visits when he can. He prays that she will decide to teach 3rd grade next year and that he would be lucky enough to get her. When I ask her what he loves most about Ms Cai he tells me, “She believes in me”. But I think its something even more powerful. She teaches him to believe in himself.
Six months after my husband left, it had become clear that he would not be contributing the money he promised to help pay for childcare and “Max-related” household expenses. He was not going to contribute to the mortgage to pay for the house we held in both our names, even though we had taken out equity in the thousands that had largely gone to Latin America to help his various family members. He was not going to be contributing at all because he couldn’t.
For six months I had been spending as though I had all that he promised. We had no savings. All our cash had flowed out to buy my husband a new van for his business, to address a huge family emergency he had. Once upon a time, when two incomes flowed into our house, we were able to get by even in times like these. The problem was, I was still stuck in that now irrelevant and practically ancient time and I was drowning in anachronisms.
I was living in a beautiful, relative well-off community and week by week, we were getting closer and closer to hungry. The checks to the babysitter bounced. The pre-school called me about the tuition payment checks that had been returned. Going to the ATM became an exercise in faith, and deep breathing to manage the stress. Colleagues left $20 bills on my chair because they noticed I hadn’t eaten lunch in days.
One night, in desperation I went up into the attic. I sorted through Max’s baby clothes, the ones I had been saving in case we had another baby, and put them in a pile for consignment. In one fell swoop, to take care of the child I had, I let go of the dream of a child to come. “Let’s be honest,” I told myself. “He’s not coming back. No partner. No new kid.” The light bill needed to be paid.
One Saturday night when I had truly hit bottom, I dragged out the change jar that was tucked in the kitchen closet. The jar where for 10 years Juan and I thrown our spare pennies and nickles, tossed them in as an investment in dreams down the line. When Juan and I were younger and poorer we would dig through the spare change jar for quarters we would use to order a pizza or buy ice cream in a romantic sort of “young and struggling” gesture. Yet no matter how struggling we were, even during those lean times, we never had to empty it. Not once.
I dragged the jar into the car and took it to the CoinStar machine at the grocery store where I turned it upside down, watching every last penny spiral into the well. When I got the receipt, I turned around and went in and used it to buy groceries. And I tried not to think about the empty coin jar in the cupboard.
What is surreal about this experience is that I had a job. A good job. Sure it was a non-profit job, but I was working for a decent salary. But still, no matter how I eventually cut my expenses to the bare bone, it was not enough. No matter how much I made, no matter how much I trimmed from our budget, it just wasn’t enough.
*****
Its taken me years to climb out of that place where I felt so on the edge of financial ruin. It is still tighter than I would like and I am not nearly saving but bit by bit I have found a way to get by with what we have now. Yet, money continues to be one of the biggest stressors in my life. I know I am in good company here.
And I continue to bury that panicked feeling, the feeling that I was standing with one foot off a cliff, that I was dangling by some imaginary tiny thread over a slippery slope that would lead to my destruction. I have kept it stuffed down and far below. I do whatever I can to keep it at bay. I don’t ever want to touch that fear again.
*****
A number of things are happening in life right now that are leading me to consider what would happen if I had to make due with even less and it has brought that fear screaming to the surface. I am toying with dreams that would require investment in tuition or an eventual shift to part-time work. “What would it mean,” I wonder “if I were to try some sort of grad school, part time, at night?” I do the tuition calculations, think about what it might mean to my income and work and suddenly I am back in that place, remembering the feeling of failure, of fear. The memories come flooding back. I can’t imagine ever going back to that place willingly. I slam the door shut.
*****
The other day I sat to talk to a stranger at the part-time graduate program I have explored. I was sitting with her because I wanted to make a financial plan to get to school one day in the future and I needed information and ideas. She had so very few concrete solutions for someone as broke as me, we were both a bit frustrated with the course of the conversation.
What she did offer was a lecture on faith. She told me that I would have to take a leap and trust that the net would appear. She told me that as much as I wanted to see it all planned out there was no way to do that and I just had to see what would happen. Just jump she said.
Suddenly I remembered the baby clothes and the CoinStar in the grocery store and the fear and loneliness I felt as panic swelled and I thought about dashing out the door while she spoke to me of attracting abundance. I had no choice then, but would I ever take Max and myself through that again. I stared at her blankly with tears brimming. “Don’t you understand how much faith it has taken me to even get to this place?” She was so kind I chose to keep my next utterance to myself, “I may lack alot, but don’t you dare insuinate that I have a lack of faith.”
*****
If I am being honest, really brutally honest, a lot of my story about the last five years does have to do with that word: LACK. Lack of money. Lack of time. Lack of patience. Lack of clean clothes. Lack of sleep. Lack of physical affection. Lack of a partner to support me. Lack of Vitamin D. Lack of energy. On many days I have taken all this lack for granted and I have stopped thinking about it in a conscious way. I shrug off the voices that come up complaining of want. I convince myself that I am a “glass half full girl” , that I concentrate with cheeriness on what I DO have. I share what time, money, energy and hope I have with joy.
But even though I can silence the whining voice, and tell myself I am grateful grateful grateful, I see that “the lack” is looming. I am trying to constantly make up for not having enough, for not being enough. I am apologizing always for what is not there. To myself, my son, my office, my friends, my family. It is insidious how “Lack” can sneak into our worldview when we are trying to live a life of gratitude.
*****
Of course, when I take a step back, when I am at my wisest, most peaceful place, I know that I dwell in a land of
abundance. I am most very grateful for all we have. We have an abundance of community and love that surrounds us. We have an abundance of cats looking for warm laps. We have an abundance of interesting and free places to explore in an amazing city. And we have an abundance of kindnesses shown to us on a daily basis, so many that I can weep sometimes to think of them all. We have an abundance of silliness and laughter and joy, an abundance of friends willing to break bread together, and abundance of hugs, of inside jokes, of campfires and music and wonder. There are countless miracles unfolding in my life–big and small–most of them arising from a random act of kindness. We have so much. I am truly blessed. Really.
I know that Max and I won’t starve as long as we dwell here.
But, as disappointing as this may be, to me and anyone else who imagines me a better person, this is not the default position of my brain. I wish it was. Of course, there are moments, like when I am listening to a friend play music or when Max is laughing or when I am sitting at a table with friends, I sink into the fullness of my life, feel its softness and ease and joy and abundance. But, most moments,well, I have to walk myself through the paces to get here, to remind myself how rich we are.
Truth is, it is why I write about my community with such relish. It is why I want to recount the miracles I experience. It is why I tell my stories of joy and sweetness and laughter over and over and over again. Writing helps me remember. Telling the stories convinces me that we are not drowning, that we are in fact, afloat in a wealth of good things. Writing calms the fear.
*****
And the thing that undoes me more than anything, is that I know that perhaps the graduate school lady is right. Perhaps the most important thing I am lacking right now really is faith. I can’t stand that that might be true.
*****
I need to make a major shift here in my soul and is a shift I don’t know how to make. If I am ever going to put that fear, that mind-numbing, sob-inducing saber toothed monster to bed, I am going to need to shift something. It is more than endlessly counting my blessings. It is more than saying the litany of all that I love about my life, like a rosary. It is more than waking up grateful and going to sleep grateful. I know because I do all these things, and still, at the end of the day when it comes to making big jumps I cannot believe that if I let go one bit of my sweet little spot on the cliff here, that it will be OK, that I won’t be dashed to smithereens on the rocks of circumstance, dragging my sweet son with me. I know this goes against everything I want to believe. I’m just sayin’.
*****
Can it be true that I lack the skills to let go of the story of lack?
*****
There are people in my life who don’t have this world view. They expect good things to flow their way. They ask for what they need and they always seem to get it, one way or another, with work, always with work, but also with ease. When insurmountable troubles or unbelievable opportunity comes their way, they always seem to have someone rush in with a check or an scheme or a helping hand. Yes, they work their butts off but the stars seem to line up too. They tell me that the stars always line up when you dwell in a place of abundance. To be honest, I am not sure even what it MEANS to dwell in abundance. I feel so silly to be so ignorant, like the one pre-teen girl who doesn’t know about the mysteries of sex, who is trying to follow the teenagers giggling gossip about the weekend before. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I want to scream…but instead I hang my head shyly in shame for not knowing about what they speak.
Every circumstance is our teacher. And I know that this is the lesson that is being placed before me now. I am, bit by bit, taking steps that might open up new ways of being, even though it scares me, frustrates me, leaves me completely undone and bewildered.
Let me whisper this. I think that as scary as it was to be on the edge of financial collapse, it is even more terrifying for me to leave behind the story of lack. It is an uncomfortable story but I knew it well and it explained so very much, and gave me so many excuses. A mentor and dear friend looked into my eyes once and told me that making this shift in my worldview honestly, would be the most challenging thing I have ever had to do. At the time I thought she was crazy, how could shifting to a life of abundance be terrifying? I am beginning to see what she means.
4 boxes of Kleenex. (Wishing I bought more now)
3 blankets and pillows
4 bottles of bubbles to blow out the windows if we get stuck in traffic (or bored…or anxious…or tired)
Strawberries, bananas and grapes
Bread and cheese and maybe a little ham in the cooler–the better to nurture weary travelers on the way home
Crackers and chips and a bag of pretzels
A 12 pack of Orange Fanta and a lot of bottled water
Chocolate in every form
Art supplies for the long long wait.
DVDs for when everyone needs to crash and stop talking.
Hope and love and comfortable shoes for waiting and pacing and waiting some more.
This morning I will drop Max off to school and then walk up the street with all this loot to my friend Dave’s house. There we will load the van and along with Shuttersister Stephanie Roberts, we will pick up the guest of honor, my dear friend Odette. We will drive the 5 hours to New York City, to JFK, to the international terminal where we will pick up her daughters, accompanied home by the gorgeous and unstoppable Jen Lemen.
It is such an honor to be allowed to witness this dream coming true. The night Odette first moved in with us almost 3 years ago, we talked all night about her girls. For the last four years, since she was forced to leave them on a crazy journey, my sister Odette has held their coming to join her in the US up as her truest dream. When her oldest daughter got sick, and she was unable to go home to tend to her, our friend Jen made the journey and has never looked back.
This journey has been the harder than I ever imagined possible. I kept thinking that there was no way it would ever come true. It seemed as though it was doomed to failure from the start, and it simultaneously made me sick to my stomach and hopeful at the same time.
Yesterday, I kept calling Odette on the phone and screaming, “They are coming!” “I know!!!” she screamed back and we would both laugh and jump up and down. It finally hit us both yesterday though it all fell into place last Friday. And today she will hold them in her arms in New York City rush hour traffic, while I blow bubbles out the car window, believing in miracles all over again.
Every once in awhile over the last few years here I mentioned my housemate Odette. I spoke about her soothing voice and how she sang in the kitchen in her native African language. I spoke about how she and Max love each other. I spoke of her wisdom, her sambusa and mandazi I spoke about how my heart broke when she moved out and into a home of her own. But I never told her story here. Her story is hers and hers alone. She was and is simply a sister, as truly family as if she was born my twin and I didn’t feel the need to say more.
So unless you follow Jen Lemen, you might not know that Odette is also a mom. She has been separated from her girls for 4 years. They have been kept apart by two continents, unthinkable bureaucracy, illness and a host of circumstances worth of Kafka. But love and miracles and faith pay off and next week, when the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano finally clears (or a plane that will fly from Africa via a route not impeded by silica can be located) they will land in the US and begin their life as American teenagers, Silver Spring style.
Two years ago we threw a party to raise money to help the girls get here. That money has been spent many times over on this journey, through illness and relocation and schools and tutors and extreme measures that needed to be taken to against all odds get their visas. Jen Lemen is now raising money to pay for the tickets to bring them home. If you are so inclined and can give even $1 or $5 your kindness will go a long way.
Yesterday, on Easter morn, we did not go to church.
Several years ago, I left the church where I was raised–driven out by disgust over sex scandals and hypocrisy. My faith in God was fully intact but my faith in the institution had crumbled. I needed a new home. After years of searching, I think we are settling in somewhere. But as lovely as that Quaker community is, we are slow to settle and have still not become regulars. Max hasn’t officially joined the Sunday school. At the end of Meeting for Worship, when it is time for visitors to stand and introduce themselves, there are always a few who look our way. We are settling in but we are still not home.
And it was with that in mind that I chose not to go to church. I remember how growing up, the priest used to admonish the casual visitors on Easter Sunday and Christmas. How the casual visitors, while theoretically welcomed, also annoyed the regulars by clogging up the parking lot and taking all the seats. The big parties of Easter and Christmas I have always thought are special times, community times and until I can become a regular, I will take a pass from the big events.
But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t go to worship.
No, Easter morning found me in my garden, attending to the miracle of resurrection playing out in my own yard. It doesn’t matter how many years I do it, each time I roll the stones and dead leaves away I am delighted and in awe to find that where once were only dead dried stalks stood, fiddleheads were raising their miraculous heads to the sun. Where there were once just withering vines, sweet woodruff was peaking up through.
Resurrection is a drama that plays out every spring, each time equally miraculous. It is the most magical and wonderous experience to see. In the fall we grieve the leaves, we let go of all that was life sustaining. The winter is cold. We witness the light die. We slow down. Buried in feet of snow, surrounded by howling winds we wonder if life will ever return. But it does. It always does. It is God’s promise to us. And yet, it requires faith beyond measure.
So instead of singing my Alleluias from a pew, I dug into the earth. Attended by Max and Kuro the wonder dog, altar boys of the garden, we raised our voices in joy, of discovering new life returning. Each hyacith, and hosta, and iris leaf wothy of an amen.
Six summers ago our babysitter went away to Central America for three weeks. Juan and I were short on cash and so we could neither afford a vacation away nor could he take the time away from his fledgling business. It was just Max and me for three weeks. We spent lots of time in the parks and library and when he would lay his toddler head down for a nap, I discovered the joy of “mindful cleaning”.
My life was in chaos at that time. I was working too long and too hard. Motherhood was overwhelming. My marriage was disintegrating and I was tired, anxious and not sleeping. My house, I have learned, is often a mirror of my heart and so it is no surprise that at the time, my living space looked and felt like a bomb went off in it.
I am not much of a housekeeper, even in the best of times. Just ask my mother, Juan or my college roommate (sorry Cindy for those four years I buried you in squalor!). Somehow, the art of keeping my space in order feels like I mystery I may never crack. I have never quite figured that organization thing out. Over the years, I outsourced a lot of that work–to cleaning services, to my husband, to my mother who would frantically scrub each time she visited. While in some years it has been better than others, I gave up on housekeeping because as the ultimate achiever I felt the calm, tidy peace of my mother’s home was something I would never achieve. A clean, orderly space might momentarily be mine, but as a rule it eluded me. The idea of spending energy on something I would never accomplish just struck me as silly. I was driven by the finished product and this was one I never would obtain, so why bother?
But that summer, when Max would sleep, I would sit. My mind would whirl and spin with worries of how everything was falling apart. Then around day 3, after a good long cry I fell quiet for once. And in that quiet, a wisdom rose: You have to take care of your life.
I didn’t know how to fix my broken marriage. I wasn’t ready to face what was making me struggle at work. I had no idea how to tackle the lack that filled me like a canyon. But I knew how to do laundry. And there was so much of it piled up. I knew how to clean windows and I had many that were dirty and streaky in the summer sun. I knew how to dust and there were inches of hidden grey dust piled up on the tops of cabinets and shelves.
So, I started to clean, not in order to arrive at a picture perfect home, but simply because it needed to be done and I needed to quiet my mind. Around this time, my friend Anne had told me about mindful eating, a practice she had started after a trip to Kripalu. She said its principles could be applied to anything. I wondered if it could apply to cleaning.
I treated myself with a small bag of new cleaning products–Mrs Meyers I think it was in geranium or lavender or some other delicious scent. I used the mid-day hours when Max would sleep to scrub and clean solely because 1) it needed to be done and 2) because it gave me a relief from the constant thinking I was doing–about my marriage, my career, my “failure” as a mother. For three weeks I cleaned, bit by bit.
The house did look better at the end of that month, but to be honest, I never did quite achieve utter sparkle. The mystery of complete cleanliness and order would remain a mystery. But at the end of the three weeks I had found some peace. In my heart there was more quiet. And I also knew that without having to solve any big problems, I was stroke by stroke, taking care of my life.
I have often returned to this exercise when life gets at its most overwhelming. This winter, all crabby I had a moment where I felt unnourished, depleted and wholly uncelebrated. “I take care of everyone!” I whined to myself. “There is no one to take care of me!” But that deep wisdom got bossy with my complaining mind. “Just breathe and take care of your life” it said. So I put down my computer, my guitar, my books and my worries and picked up the laundry basket, the mop and the spray bottle. Not with any goals other that simple deep loving care of myself and my son.
I have thought of this story often as I have seen bits and pieces leak out of Karen Maezen Miller’s new book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life. I am a little girl waiting for Christmas, anticipating its arrival, joyously loading the dishwasher while I wait. You can read an excerpt of it here. You can hear Karen’s beautiful soothing voice reading a selection of it here. And you can start your search for peace of mind in here, in your own laundry room or kitchen with nothing more than than your willing hands.
