everyday life

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for so much that I sometimes feel gratitude like a swell in my chest, pressing on me from the inside out.  And yet, there is still so much here I do not understand (Adrienne Rich).  Loved ones circle around tables and take time to consider that which matters most, the world turns ever-faster towards the darkest day of the year, our family in particular remembers the heart transplant, nine years ago, that changed all of us forever.

This is a particularly evocative time, for me, in the natural world.  The shadows gather earlier and earlier and the trees lose the last of their leaves.  The light right now carries a particular charge of both life and loss.  This weekend we will probably return to one of our favorite places, the tower at Mount Auburn, where last year my children took my breath away with their wisdom.  Perhaps we will go back to Walden.  For me this is always a quiet, thoughtful weekend, replete with both sorrow and hope.  Thanksgiving is the holiday of grace incarnate.

Maybe this is what grace is, the unseen sounds that make you look up. I think it’s why we are here, to see as many chips of blue sky as we can bear. To find the diamond hearts within one another’s meatballs. To notice flickers of the divine, like dust motes on sunbeams in your dusty kitchen. Without all the shade and shadows, you’d miss the beauty of the veil. The shadow is always there, and if you don’t remember it, when it falls on you and your life again, you’re plunged into darkness. Shadows make the light show. – Anne Lamott

Isn’t it, after all, the interplay of light and shadow that provides the texture of our lives? The darkness creates contrast, but it also scoops out some emotional part of me, allowing me to contain – experience, recognize, feel – more joy. I am grateful, I realize anew, for way my lens on the world is striated with both light and dark.

I am thankful today for evening light on bare trees, for the deep, glowing blue of the afternoon sky, for the words of a friend that make me feel less alone, for the tousled hair of sleepy children, for the lyrics of a song that bring tears to my eyes, for the moments when I am really and truly present, when I feel my spirit beating like wings in my chest.

So, this is happysad day for me, in a reflective season. My heart swells with awareness of my tremendous blessings, of the extravagant beauty that is my world. My thoughts are quiet and shadowy, but lit by incandescent beams of light. Like a night sky whose darkness is obliterated over and over by the flare of roman candles exploding, their colors made more beautiful by the surprise of them against the darkness. Like my life.

(I wrote these paragraphs in 2009 and they still feel as enormously, specifically relevant today as they did then, so I share them again)

Still

This bird, which I think is a sparrow, has lately taken refuge in the corner of our front porch’s roof every few days.  The first time I saw him I had to look again, closely, wondering if he was alive.  I stood in the open door, watching for long minutes before I grew quiet enough to  finally see his little chest expanding and contracting. Yes.  He is alive.  The second time I saw him I thought: oh, wow, what a coincidence.

Now he’s familiar, no longer a shock, no longer a coincidence.  The first time I pointed him out to Grace and Whit they reacted in a way that surprised me: instinctively, their voices fell, their demeanor softened.  When he comes, they each choose to stand in the front door gazing up at him for much longer than I would have expected.  They are riveted, charmed, enchanted.  For some reason they treat him, and the space around him, with a kind of respect and reverence that is rare in the rest of their lives.  Now it is they who point him out to me, and his little corner is the first place they look every time they pass the door.

“Can I name him?” Grace asked me recently.  Of course, I answered.

“I’m going to think about it,” she said.  A couple of days later, she was sitting at breakfast eating her Cheerios in silence.  She chewed and looked quietly out the window.  I cleaned out the coffee maker.  Out of nowhere, she said, “Still.”

I turned to her.  “What, Grace?”

“Still.  That’s the bird’s name.”  I nodded at her.  Tears sprang to my eyes.  “Because he’s so still.”

And, I thought, because he’s still here.  He is still, motionless, quiet, calm.  And he is devoted, dedicated; he comes back.  And now, every time I see him, I can feel something solid and velvety burrow in my chest, can feel my exhales deepen.  And I think:

Still.

Little wonders

Last week we biked to school.  Grace had her 9 year checkup so wasn’t going to stay at school.  I ran alongside them on the way there and was reminded of how close we live to school.  Then Grace and I took the bikes home (me riding Whit’s bike: major thigh work out.  Good GOD.).  Whit was so thrilled about this adventure that he put his helmet on before his pants that morning, and talked about it all week long.  I’m so proud that my son is still delighted by such little wonders.

On Friday, 11/11/11, Whit and I sat in the kitchen and watched the various digital clocks tick towards 11:11.  This screen shot was the closest I could get to capturing the moment because the clocks didn’t display the date.  I know, I know – it is an entirely artificial construct, this 11:11 on 11/11/11 thing.  Nonetheless, we both anticipated the moment and shared it with a quiet seriousness that verged on reverence.  Celebrating another little wonder.

On Sunday we raked leaves.  Our “yard” is small, so this takes about 20 minutes.  Grace and Whit put patagonias over their pajamas and spent long moments trying to throw the pods that a neighbor’s tree sheds from the porch into the big yard waste bag.  Then we all fell into silence when a familiar cardinal arrived, perched on our fence, looked around.  They watched him, awed, quiet, admiring a little wonder.

On Sunday Grace and I had what may well have been our last lunch at the American Girl store.  She’s still playing with her American Girls, but I know the days of imaginative play with Julie and Samantha are numbered.  All of her friends have already moved on.  I tried not to dwell on the last-ness of our lunch, but it was hard.  As she looked down at the menu, I snapped this picture.  I love it.  My mother’s childhood nickname for me echoes in my mind as I look at this picture, pressing itself into my lips.  It’s what I want to call Grace.  Mum always called me her little wonder.

Am I the only person who finds the very pavement a bewitching, beguiling, constantly changing poem?  I can’t stop looking down.  Well, that is, when I’m not looking up (aside: maybe it’s no wonder I trip more often than the average non-toddler.  I’m simply so absorbed in life around me that I don’t pay attention to my footing.  Surely there’s a metaphor here…) Everywhere I step I’m walking on color, on pattern, on message and beauty.  Little wonders, all around.

Looking out the window

One day last week I was puttering in the kitchen and it occurred to me I hadn’t seen Whit in a while.  “Whit?” I hollered up the staircase.  Our house is very up-and-down and we have a terrible habit, all of us, of shouting up and down the stairs.

“Yes?” I heard him answer from upstairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just looking out the window.”

Oh.  I stood in the kitchen, a potholder in my hand, stunned, still, thinking about that.

Later that afternoon I was folding laundry on our bed while Whit sat in the upholstered chair in our bay window talking to me.  The late-afternoon sun streamed in, viscous, gold, like maple syrup.  I shook out pajama bottoms and folded them, smoothed little boy underpants printed with robots and sailboats with my hand, piling them neatly.

“Mummy?” Whit said from his perch, and I turned to see that he was gazing out the window.

“Yes?”

“Admire the light of this hour.”

I gaped and looked at him, at the back of his head which glowed, burnished blond, in the late-afternoon autumn light.  I had just recently reminded my children about looking at the light of every hour, about the power of really noticing things.  Still, I hadn’t realized how fully he had internalized this.  I dwell so often on the myriad ways Grace is, often uncomfortably, like me but for some reason reminders that Whit too has a seam of sensitivity and awareness running through him tend to take me aback.  I find it particularly moving that my Lego-worshiping, lightsaber-wielding six year old son can also spend long minutes looking out the window.  I’m not sure why this surprises me: I guess that Whit, like his mother and many people I love, contains multitudes.

Little Things

Listening to the new Indigo Girls album.

Reading After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Kornfield, and a manuscript by someone in my writing class.  Both, wonderful.

Noticing how entirely Grace and Whit have internalized our Notice Things Walks.  They notice things everywhere now, with new patience and quiet alacrity.  The blue jay out the kitchen window, the few red roses around the corner that survived the frost, a new smell (“it’s crispy!” exclaimed Whit) in the air in the morning.

Buying Christmas presents for my godchildren and nieces and nephews.  We have very simple, gift-light Christmases in my family, but I like to put a lot of thought into the gifts we give to the very special children in our lives.

Struggling to trust that the pain in my body will ebb.  In the very struggle, I fear, are the seeds of my failure.  Increasingly I suspect that trying hard is not only not the way to trust, but something that may actually keep it at bay.

Playing games before bed with the children instead of their watching TV.  Boggle, Guess Who, Connect Four, Uno.

Photographing morning sunlight on ever barer tree branches, trying to capture its golden, animate quality, and failing every time.  This light, like rain falling, seems to be one of those essential metaphors of nature that resists capture in literal ways.  Only the poet can really describe it.

Eating a lot of sweet potatoes, spinach, miso soup, kale chips, peanut butter, and homemade applesauce.

Waking up early and running in the night-dark morning, watching the sky crack open and begin to bleed eggshell colored light just as I return home.

Wearing a new pair of brown pajamas from eberjey that are so soft I never want to take them off.

Leaning towards home, towards quiet, towards softness, towards my children and a handful of the dearest and gentlest people I know.  And away from everything and everyone else.

Asking the universe, or my personal image of God, to reassure me that everything is going to be okay.

What little things are you doing these days?

Inspired by Ali Edwards’ lovely post