Month: April 2010

The things I carry

I wrote last week about the physical things I carry with me, in my bag, and I enjoyed reading many of my favorite bloggers as they too spilled the contents of their bags. For the last couple of days, though, I’ve been thinking about the other things that are always with me, in my head and in my heart. Sometimes these things, abstract as they are, feel as awkward and heavy to carry as any physical bag.

I carry people. My closest friends and family travel alongside me everywhere I go, floating into my mind’s eye at various times. Places, sounds, smells remind me of times shared with those dear and, actually, occasionally, those not. Sometimes an old friend, long lost, will rise to the surface of my thoughts like a piece of something buoyant bobbing up, and I wonder what hidden disturbance dislodged thoughts of that person from their deep resting place in my memory. There are a few close people who are with me all the time, whose voices I hear in my head, whose wisdom and input guide me every day.

I carry words. Snippets of poems from poets old and new (Wordsworth, Keats, Olds, Oliver, Sexton, Rich are some of the most familiar) run through my mind at seemingly random moments. I know, of course, that there is nothing random about why certain words rise to mind at certain times, and I try to pay heed to the messages that they carry. Song lyrics, passages from books, quotes that I know by heart. All of these words accompany me, a private soundtrack, a story narrated by my subconscious.

I carry my demons. These fears meet me every single day, jumping out at me unanticipated from corners I didn’t even know were there. I am learning to bear their visits, to let them wash over me without reacting too much, trusting that they will end. This, the not reacting, is my primary challenge.  My insecurities, often so toxic, show a tenacious stubbornness, clinging to the surface of my identity like barnacles.

I carry my supporters.  Their words go directly to war with those of the demons, and who wins changes daily.  There are a handful of people throughout my life who have seen value and substance inside of me, and this steady belief, when I let myself trust it, sustains me.  Some of these supporters are from long ago, teachers or friends, and some are much newer members of my life, of my tribe; it is impossible for me to express my gratitude for these kind and generous voices, who often form a bulwark that protects me up against the fears and doubts that often threaten to engulf me.

I carry all of these things with me every day, in my soul, in my heart, in my head.  The voices and influences rise and fall depending on the day, the hour, the moment.  Many of them are consistent, expected, anticipated – certain memories are triggered by predictable sights, smells, sounds.  At other times, I am surprised by what or who sweeps to the forefront of my consciousness.  I strive only to remain open to these voices, these people, these memories, these friends, to honor their coming and to receive gratefully to their influence.

Libraries Matter

It is my distinct honor to be guest posting at World’s Strongest Librarian today.  I adore Josh’s writing and was surprised and delighted when he agreed to share my reflections on libraries.  Please head over to read my post, Libraries Matter, and then spend some time exploring Josh’s site.  You won’t be sorry!

Things I do not want to forget

Easter morning.  Always, they are walking away.

The way Whit’s shoulder blades feel like little wings, jutting gently out of his back, with its clearly articulated string of pearls of a spine.

Grace kneeling on the floor by her orange-canopied American Girl doll bed, tucking Samantha and Julie into bed next to each other. The way she earnestly changes them into their pajamas before bed and back into clothes in the morning.

Reading picture books to Grace and Whit over breakfast in the morning, sitting between them at the little square kitchen table, the way just the offer of reading is able to defuse the rowdiest sibling argument.

Whit dragging a kitchen chair over to the island and standing on it, stirring a bowl of cookie or brownie batter. His careful cracking of eggs into the bowl.

The way Grace’s face lights up when I take the time to turn, look at her, and join her in singing along to a song on the radio.

The “ghostie dance” that Whit demands that I do every night, to make sure that no ghosts bother him while he’s sleeping. Similarly, the way my patented “sweet dreams head rub” can help either child back to sleep when nightmares wake them up.

The view from my office, the beloved square of the world that I gaze on for hours a day. Today the big tree across the street is covered in pale green blossoms, and casting faint shadows onto the slate mansard roof of the house across from us.

Hearing Grace and Whit talking to each other through the heating duct in the wall between their rooms. They figured out this was a way to communicate, an in-wall tin can telephone of sorts, and hearing them stage whisper to one another from their enforced personal “quiet time” makes me both laugh and cry.

The afternoons that we dance to Miley Cyrus in the kitchen, when I gave in to an all-too-rare giggle and abandon myself to the sheer joy that both Grace and Whit seem to inhabit hourly.

Hand Wash Cold

I had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life by Karen Maezen Miller. I was midway through Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Everyday Blessings, which I put aside to read this beautiful, slender book. I loved every word of it, of this book that communicates its deep wisdom in a deceptively gentle way. I say deceptively because it is easy to read, conversationally written, approachable, and yet it is immensely powerful: Karen’s words have already permeated my porous mind, shifted slightly but irrevocably the way I look at the world.

Hand Wash Cold, which is on the surface somewhat unassuming, has in fact the most ambitious and noble goal of all: to change how we live our lives. Karen asserts that life’s grandeur is right here, in the laundry, in the dishes, in the view out of the window above the sink. Admittedly, I’m a receptive audience, as this is the theme I return to over and over lately, the message that the universe is sending me more and more loudly over time. Even so, I adored this book. It is lovely, lyrical, potent, and sage. Actually, Karen’s description of reading the Tao Te Ching is an apt description of how I felt reading this book:

But the words fell inside me, dropped all the way down and echoed back up again. My skin shivered. My heart throbbed.

The words echoed and are still echoing. Karen is able to express the ineffable space of true holiness: the power of attention, the importance of letting go of attachment and judgment, the futility of looking for others to complete our own selves. As I read this book I thought of cathedrals, and of how what Karen has crafted is the opposite of that. Let me explain. Cathedrals awe me: they are ornate, expansively beautiful, often glittering, a celebration of something far away, revered, not fully understood. Faith, however, is something truly different; faith is more intimate. It is right here. It is understood so completely it does not need to be articulated. It is curled in my very chest. Hand Wash Cold is, in my view, a pure expression of faith.

There are so many passages that I underlined, so many sentences that made my breath catch in my throat and my eyes fill with tears. I love Karen’s writing about how we are not our emotions, her head-on confrontation of the things that most of us fear most deeply (they are all going to come true anyway, she posits, rightfully, so why waste the energy?), her articulate distillation of that place that is “beyond the intellect,” and her longing, loving descriptions of parenthood as “complete and inexpressible union with the divine. As I flip through the book, there is ballpoint pen on almost every page, notes scribbled in margins and passages underlined.

There is so much to say about this book, but at the same time I don’t want to lard my review with excess language, to complicate in my words the phosphorescent simplicity of Karen’s message. The message that your life is right here. In front of your eyes. In the laundry. In the mess. Nowhere else. Not even tomorrow. The message is both a challenge and a reassurance: there is simultaneously so much to do, emotionally, and also nothing at all. Just sit here, breathe, and look at your life, Karen seems to be saying. It – and you – are already enough. Thank you, Karen, for these glowing words of wisdom. I will return to them – I already have! – as touchstones, turning them over like secret rocks in my pocket, drawing strength from their smooth surfaces in my fingers. I close with my favorite passage:

Life is suffering. No one can make less of it. Pain finds us without fail. Hearts break; dreams die; hatred flourishes; sickness prevails; people and promises leave without a trace. I dare not trivialize. I only dare to turn toward the glimmer and let it lift me into a moment’s radiant grace. This is the turn we have to take, over and over, to make our way home, to reach the untrammeled peace, the pure marvel, of an ordinary life. We must finally see that the light we seek streams from our very own eyes and always has.

Easter

I don’t have much in the way of words today, feeling heavy-hearted and wistful as I do, and so I am even more grateful than usual to read Katrina Kenison‘s beautiful, lyrical words. Reading them today I feel as though she is speaking (as she did in her lovely book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day) from the turbulent center of all that is unresolved and complicated in my heart. This is an excerpt from her moving, honest post – you won’t regret going to read the whole thing here.

“It is the not knowing what comes next that makes me afraid, the sense of helplessness I feel when confronted with the morning’s grim headlines, a dear friend’s diagnosis, a son’s poor choice. How much better to remember that uncertainty is always part of the picture, fragility part of our human condition. If not for sadness, there would be no joy. Faith wavers, is tested by adversity, and is thus restored. Darkness, an inevitable part of life, is always followed by light.

“Healing,” as Pema Chodron reminds us, “can be found in the tenderness of pain itself.” On this Easter morning I aspire to a small resurrection of the heart. I will get up in a moment, take a walk with my son, go to brunch and read the New York Times. But the real action will take place on the inside, as I remind myself to open, soften, and take the world in just as it is.”