everyday life

Wonder

I am so grateful for the thoughtful comments on my post last week asking what this blog is about.  What, you say?  I write it, I should know?  Yes, well … I realize I should.  Pam emailed me after her day with Karen Maezen Miller and said, “I think you should simply say you write about the face of God.”  And I laughed, and went on with my day, and I kept coming back to it.  I don’t know that I’d say it quite like that, but I do think one of the things I am most interested in is the way that divinity itself flashes through even the most ordinary day.  And the thing is, it was only when I really started paying attention and began living inside my own life that I began to see it.

Another way of saying this: I am utterly preoccupied by wonder.

While I’m far more aware now, I do have a few memories from long ago of being simply started by the brilliance of the world.  One of the most vivid is of one late afternoon in AP Biology.  I went to high school in New Hampshire, and we went to class from 4 to 6pm, so it was pitch black during the last period for much of the year.  Pitch black, freezing cold, cloaked in ice and snow.  Hospitable, the environment was not.

I sat in AP Bio, the dark windows all around us contributing to the sense that were floating alone in the world.  My wonderful teacher could have been from central casting, with his bald head, neatly trimmed beard, and clipped British accent.  He was talking about the human body, gesturing to his own arm, talking about bones and tendons and blood vessels.  Something about the many tiny bones in the human hand.  He held his own hand up, looked at it, bent the fingers.  A hush fell over the room.  He looked at us, his dark eyes sweeping across our faces, and whispered, “Isn’t it amazing?”

Oh, it brings tears to my eyes to remember that moment.  I thought of it tonight when listening to Elissa’s gorgeous podcast called What Takes Your Breath Away?

I’m immensely grateful, more than I can express, at the frequency with which the world – and my own life – takes my breath away these days.  May I never stop being amazed.

Pink petals, Jimmy, and the pain of saying goodbye

Yesterday was just another ordinary day.  A day of my life, bracketed in the morning and the evening with reminders to open my eyes and to appreciate what is right here.  It’s amazing, now that I see these nudges, how many of them there are.  I wonder how myopic I must have been, all those years with my eyes focused on that next thing, to have missed so many messages from the universe.  Well, were the messages from out there or were they from in here, the most intimate place there is?  From my spirit, my soul, my very life?

Early in the morning I set off to take the subway (the T) to a meeting.  I was walking down the familiar street to the T stop, a walk I’ve made hundreds of times in the nine years we’ve lived in our house, my nose buried in my iPhone.  I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I stepped onto a carpet of pink petals.

You can see I had made my way onto the edge of this gorgeous drift of pink petal snow before I woke up, literally.  I stood there and took pictures, breathing in the faint smell of the blossoms, their perfume spring incarnate. (not quite Princeton’s magnolias, but close).  I looked up and saw the cerulean blue sky through the pink branches.  And I was ashamed, truly, that I would have missed this.

I tucked Whit into bed tonight hugging Jimmy, the class teddy bear who spent the weekend with us.  Every weekend Jimmy visits a different classmate in Whit’s Beginner class, and this was ours.  Grace and I were just starting to read about Hermione and Harry’s vociferous defense of Sirius Black when I heard a strange sound from upstairs.  I paused.  “What’s that, Gracie?” We both listened.  Nothing.  I started reading again.  The noise started back up.  It was Whit, weeping

After a few moments where I tried to figure out if he was posing – yet another new trick to postpone bed? – she and I went upstairs to check on Whit.  He was lying in bed, face awash in tears, clutching Jimmy.  I sat on the edge of his bed and asked him what was wrong.  His words were punctuated with sobs as he choked out how upset he was to say goodbye to Jimmy tomorrow.  “Oh, Whitty,” I said.  My heart felt like it leaned over in my chest, angling towards him.  Deep in my chest I recognized his pain, the brutal symmetry of love and loss, so much on my mind lately.  I told him I know how hard it was to say goodbye to things we love.

A few minutes later, Grace and I were reading again when I heard Whit ask quietly, “Will you snuggle me?”  I looked up to see him standing forlornly on the stairs, Jimmy held against his chest.  “Of course,” I answered.  After I kissed Grace goodnight, I went upstairs and lay down on Whit’s bottom bunk..  I curled behind him, singing along in a whisper to his lullabye CD’s version of You Are My Sunshine, listening to his sobs grow slower and quieter.  After days of being all bravado and bluster, he had dissolved back into my emotional son, my little boy with big feelings, and I thought about how often he will shuttle between these two poles over the next few years.

“Are you ready for me to go?” I murmured against his neck.  “No,” he said quickly, quietly, and so I lay with him for another song.  And here I am now, at my desk, eager to get going on a new essay idea I have.  But first I have to put pictures of Jimmy’s visit into the class album, with narration of his weekend activities.  I’m not annoyed that I have to do that before my “real” writing.  This is also writing, in its own way, the writing of my ordinary life.

A repost from exactly a year ago … I’m startled by how I’m still thinking about the same themes, confronting the same challenges, grappling with the same emotions.  The very same.

The universe, coincidence, and bad guys

One of my friends from business school lost a brother in 9/11.  My friend, his wife, and the rest of his large family started a foundation in their brother’s name.  On Sunday I wore a tee-shirt from one of their fundraisers to go running.  I didn’t have time to shower when I got back, and so, hours later, when I bathed the kids, I was still wearing it.

“Who is the man whose name is on your tee-shirt, Mummy?” asked Grace idly, tracing her fingers through the bubbles in the bath.  I swallowed.  Both she and Whit know in general terms about “when the planes flew into the buildings” but they don’t know more than that.  Were they ready?

“Well,” I began, “Remember how we talked about the day when the planes flew into the buildings?  A friend of mine’s brother was in one of the buildings, and he died that day.”  I paused.  Both Grace and Whit were quiet.

“The pilots flew the plane into the building?”  Grace looked at me.

“Well, no.  The bad guys on the plane took over the cockpit.”

“How?  And what did they do to the pilots, Mummy?”

“I think they used force to get into the cockpit.  And the pilots,” I looked straight at her, hesitating.  “Well, they died.”

Grace’s mouth formed a silent “o” and she looked down at the bathwater.

“Why didn’t your friend’s brother get out of the building, Mummy?”  If Whit were any child I’d have sworn he wasn’t listening, so busy did he seem with the bathtub dinosaur toys.  But clearly he wasn’t missing a word.

“Well, Whit, they couldn’t get out.”

“Do you think they felt it when the plane hit the building?  Did they feel it when the building fell down?’

I was at a loss for words.  How to convey this day, so enormous, so terrifying, in a gentle, age-appropriate way?

“I don’t know what they felt, Whit.”  I spoke slowly, trying for gentleness.  “I wasn’t there.”

The conversation went on to talk about security at airports, and how things are much different now than they were before 9/11.  Grace and Whit wanted to know a lot about the bad guys, who they were, how it is that they killed themselves for their countries.  I had to be very clear that these people were not heroes, despite this act.  Based on their very specific questions, and the way that they wouldn’t let the topic go, I decided that they deserved real answers.  By the time we were finished talking, both kids were dry and in their pjs.  This was a long, detailed conversation, and left us – as most conversations in my life do – with more questions than answers.  What is it to really hate a people, when you don’t know them?  How do you life with intense fear, as the people on the planes must have felt?  Who was Osama Bin Laden and why was he so angry?  What does it feel like to feel the ground beneath you fall out, and to tumble to the ground?

Grace wanted to pray for the people who died in 9/11 when she was going to sleep, and so we did.  And I woke up to the news that he had been killed.  In my Monday morning oblivion I didn’t even realize the coincidence (or not) until Kathryn emailed me to point it out.  And since that moment goosebumps have buzzed up and down my arms and neck.  A reminder of the great river of humanity, both seen and unseen, that we all travel in.  Everything is connected.

All day long I’ve been reading messages, tweets, blog posts, and articles about Bin Laden’s death.  This morning, driving from school to the grocery store, I listened to NPR reporting on the massive celebratory throngs that has sprung up all over America last night.  They played a recording of BU students belting out America the Beautiful.  They compared the mood of the crowds to the emotional, triumphant reaction to the Red Sox winning the World. Series.  What?

And all day, I’ve felt ambivalent about this.  I’m not unhappy that Bin Laden is gone, though I am wary about celebrating an active murder no matter what the reasons behind it.  But I think my ambivalence is more general: why are we celebrating anything about an event, and an ongoing situation, so full of pain, misunderstanding, and sorrow?  While I can definitely see the justice in this outcome,  I feel sad, not joyful, not proud, about this reminder that our world is most certainly not in a place of compassion and empathy.

Last night, as I tucked Grace into bed, she asked me again about the planes and the buildings.  It was clear from her tone that she had been thinking about it all day.  “What happened to the bad guy?” she asked me, and the hairs on my arms stood up.  I looked straight at her, deciding in that moment she deserved, again, a real answer.

“Well, Gracie, he actually died yesterday.”  Her eyes widened, the whites glowing in the dark of her room.  “The US military found him and killed him.”

“They did?”  She asked faintly, curling her beloved brown bear more tightly into her chest.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, they wanted to keep America safe and make sure he couldn’t plan anymore attacks.  And I guess they wanted to punish him for having caused so much pain.”

“Oh.” She was quiet.  “Are we supposed to be glad about that, Mummy?” Her voice wavered.

“I don’t know, Grace.”  I hugged her, smelling the shampoo I was her hair with every night, hearing the achingly familiar lullabyes from her CD player.  “I don’t know.”

Choosing my bubble

I do not read the newspaper.  I do not watch TV.  I do not read news online.  Literally, I live in a bubble whose only news inputs are my google reader and my twitter feed.  I heard about both the Japanese earthquake and William and Kate’s engagement on twitter.  I smile whenever I read about a “media fast,” and the benefits thereof, because that’s how I live my life.

It drives my husband crazy that I’m so utterly clueless about current events.  It routinely makes me feel shy and embarrassed (shyer and more embarrassed, that is) when in social contexts I have no idea what people are talking about.  It is something I’m actively ashamed about: why am I not more curious, more informed, more educated about world news?   There are lots of downsides to this approach.

I can’t pretend that the impetus for my oblivion isn’t some part laziness.  It is.  It’s also some part choice, though, and there are many benefits to it.  I used to check the stock market several times a day, for example, and stress myself out when it was falling.  I haven’t done that in years.  I used to check the weather and feel anxious about storms on the horizon.  I don’t do that anymore.  At one point this winter, during one of the storms for which he was out of town (okay, that was every storm), Matt called all bent out of shape: “They are saying 18 to 20, Linds!  You need to make sure the vent pipe on the side of the house doesn’t get blocked!  Do you know where the salt is for the driveway?”  He went on and on and only stopped when he had to take a breath.  Into the silence I said, tentatively, “Well, I’m looking out the window, and it’s really only flurrying.”

In that moment I realized that maybe what’s going on with my media consumption is a symptom of a larger shift.  A shift towards an internal voice, towards that which I can feel, touch, verify, believe in.  It is also a recognition that I have enough triggers in my head, enough reasons to stress and cry, without adding on unnecessary external ones (I’m not saying that the earthquake in Japan, for example, is unnecessary: generally the big news makes it through into my bubble).

This realization makes me feel that there is far more subconscious intention behind my behavior than I was ever aware of.  And it made me feel a lot better about the sometimes-otherworldly bubble I exist in most of the time. I think I’ll stay here, especially with the calming effects of the Best Mushroom Coffee in the US helping me stay grounded.

A physical sensation of joy

“You’re kind of funny,” Matt said to me the other night, “And hardly anybody knows that about you.”  I looked down the stairs to see that he was grinning up at me, laughing at some crack I’d just made.  I don’t even remember what it was.  But the moment made me think of how frequently I write here of the tough stuff, the bleakness I can’t shake, the sensitivity that defines my experience in the world, the tears that come up every single day.  A reader could easily think I’m a heavy, gloomy person. I’ve received more than one inquiry along these lines, from well-intentioned people sincerely concerned about my state of mind.

So I was grateful to read Pam’s once-again-beautiful words, this time on this very subject.  She quotes from Dani Shapiro’s Devotion (a book you all know I worship), a passage where Dani quotes Sylvia Boorstein: “I think of it as the edge of melancholy,” Sylvia said, “and it’s where I live – but at the same time, I am easily cheered.”  Pam goes on to share moments of her radiantly beautiful ordinary life that cheer her immensely.

I was moved to do the same, upon reading her words.  There is plenty that makes me smile and grin and laugh, every single day.  Yes, my days contain plenty of murk and mess, their share of tears and heartbreak.  I’ve said it before: It’s all connected, the way I observe the world in sometimes-excruciating detail, the untrammelled rushes of joy I can feel at the most unexpected times, the heart-wrenching pain my life delivers at others.  This is all a part of being an exceptionally porous person.  Is it any wonder that I’ve had to develop coping mechanisms, be they an aversion to true vulnerability or a tendency towards distraction, in order to mitigate the power of constantly living in such an exposed way?  I’m easily overwhelmed by the grandeur and terror of this life, and I have over 36 years built up a variety of ways of managing the pain that that inundation can bring with it.  It’s a package deal, the wound and the wonder.  I don’t know how to have one without the other.  Even the most swollen, shiny rapture is striated with sadness.

Inspired by Pam, here are a few things that make me feel joy so strong it is a physical sensation.  I’m not sure I dwell enough on those in this blog, on the untrammelled joy, the swollen, shiny rapture, the radiance.

Parrot tulips, pale pink and green.
Bricks, outside our front porch, colored in chalk in the rain by Grace and Whit.
Two eight year old girls climbing onto the roof of a play structure at the park on an early spring day.
Whit, reading quietly in bed (after he protested my effort to put him to bed at 6:52, I allowed 15 minutes of solo reading).
Sunrise from the air over New York, 6:30am, last week.