everyday life

Turning our brokenness into something beautiful

This is the darkest season; we wake in darkness and we watch the sun wane again before the clock has hit 5:00.  The light in the middle of the day is often pitched, somehow, at a high, wavering note; it is full and thin at the same time, endings tangible within it.  Somehow, the dark bothers me less than it used to.  There is an internal light that helps keep the thick, sometimes-threatening darkness slightly at bay.

The optimist in me feels a wild surge of hope about this: perhaps I am witnessing the birth of my own faith. This is a holy month, after all, full of imagery of light, regardless of your religion. Perhaps it is the flickering, nascent light of my own belief that illuminates these dark days. The candles in windows and the holiday lights strung on trees and in windows everywhere I look both reflect and contribute to that internal flickering.

We move towards the solstice, every day closer.  The winter solstice may well be the single holiest day of the year for me.  I definitely prefer it to the summer one, which demonstrates as clearly as any detail about me how much the promise of something (good and bad) impacts me.  Even at the height of summer, with the longest days we’ll ever know, there is something gloomy to me about the solstice.  It represents the turning back to dark.  That’s the preemptive regret that I’ve written about, which can completely occlude any present radiance for me.  This solstice, two weeks away, is the opposite.  It promises a turning back towards the light.

A year ago I read some of Meg Casey’s thoughts on the holiness that exists in darkness.  They moved me so much then, and continue to, that I want to post them again.  Once in a great while I read a piece of writing that makes me want to kneel and press my head to the ground, saluting its gorgeousness and ability to evoke emotion. This is one such piece. Please read it.

December is a holy month. Maybe it is the dark silky silence that descends so early, that speaks to me of reverence. Maybe it is the promise that December holds–that no matter how dark, how cold, how empty it can get, the light is coming back. Something always shifts in me when December arrives–I embrace the darkness and am eager for the coming solstice when the whole world is still and holds its breath, waiting to be reborn again. December whispers to me of midnight mass, of ancient choirs, of stained glass windows turned into gems by candle light.

Meg then goes on to talk about the connection between holiness and wholeness, using the image of a stained glass window: Broken, jagged, sharp pieces of glass held together magically, transformed into one perfect design not by gold or silver but by something as mundane as lead. And, of course, it is the light that animates the beauty.  Meg’s post reminds me of one of my very favorite of Anne Lamott’s lines: “Love is sovereign.” Yes. As Meg says, Love is the transformative power that turns our brokenness into something beautiful.

I love this because I think we often think of light as exposing flaws, unearthing chinks, revealing ugliness.  Yet in Meg’s metaphor it is light that knits disparate pieces into a whole, that reveals the light that exists within them.  Love as light.  Transformative, healing brokenness, uncovering worth.  May we all strive to be this kind of light, even in the dark moments of our lives.

There are some themes in my writing of which I’m very conscious.  Others emerge organically, and I’m not aware of them until I reflect for a moment.  Light and darkness has been a message to which I’ve returned this year, over and over.  I am often moved to tears by the quality of light in nature, and the metaphor of dark and light has also been one to which I am consistently drawn. Light and darkness.  Holiness and grace.  Radiance and shadow.  We keep on turning, and the shadows keep dancing, the light flickering.  All I can do is keep watching.

Day 4 of Reverb10 – Wonder

#Reverb10, day 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I let go and let my children lead the way.  In particular over the summer, which was full of wonder.  That wonder was tangible in adventures both big, like Story Land and Lego Land, and small, like hysterical laughter in the morning before tennis camp or Whit finally learning to swim.  I don’t know why it’s taken me so long, but I feel like something finally dissolved this summer, some final wall between me and my life crumbled.  And on the other side was wonder.

Things whose days are numbered

Things whose days are numbered:

1. The Sweet Dreams Head Rub and Ghostie Dance being enough to assure happy slumber for both kids

2. Sitting on the floor of the gym, a child on my lap, singing our hearts out at the Pre-K, K, and 1st grade holiday sing-a-long at school

3. Whit wearing little briefs printed with robots, dinosaurs, and boats

4. Carrying Whit to bed after taking him to the potty at 10pm.  His legs already dangle alarmingly near my knees

5. Grace happily holding my hand walking down the street

6. Buckling carseats

7. Two children in the bath together

8. Shopping for clothes at Baby Gap

9. Whit picking Goodnight Moon for me to read to him before bed

10. Grace’s sheer wonder at a visit from the tooth fairy

Honestly, the truth of this makes my heart throb.  Makes it ache as though it might split open, like an overripe peach.  How do others handle this, the irrefutable drumbeat march of time?  There’s no question this is my rawest wound.  It is a cord of feeling that vibrates painfully inside me and a shadow that haunts the edges of even the sunniest day.

Adrienne Rich asserts of Marie Curie that “her wounds came from the same source of her power.”  I’m still trying to ascertain exactly how my deep hurt about the impermanence of things might also be a strength.  I am not at all clear on how the source of this  churning well of feeling to which I return again and again could also be a source of power, strength, confidence.

I want my heart to dwell here, in the rooms of my days.  I can only recommit, every single day to trying to remember that, to tugging myself back to now.  I do that even knowing full well my own tendency to mourn an experience even as I’m still in the midst of living it.  I wish I could stop grieving that which will be soon gone, but I’m not sure I can.  Most of our last times happen without us knowing, slipping into the past tense in the narrative of our lives almost unnoticed.  I am more aware than many of this, but even so I fail to mark these transitions all the time.

So, here I go, into the season of white lights and carols, paperwhites and holiday cards, eyes and heart wide open.  This may be the last year that Grace believes in Santa Claus.  May be the last year Whit wears a Baby Gap sweater.  May be the last year they both cite that baking cookies with me is their very favorite thing to do.  More numbered days.  They all are, though, aren’t they?

Sometimes it’s hard to keep your head on straight

Whit has been on fire lately.  On Sunday he triggered a thoughtful conversation, one that incidentally mirrored in one of those can’t-be-a-coincidence ways the quote I shared on Thanksgiving, the words that best capture how I felt on that day – and in this season – of gratitude, emotion, celebration, and tradition.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, that will be enough” – Meister Eckhart

I’m also thankful for Whit’s sense of humor, though.  Matt is away this week, so I’m sleeping as late as I possibly can (he believes the day should start at 6 something, I believe the day should start at 7 something, which is actually not as minor a distinction as it might appear).  Yesterday morning I woke up at 7:24, both kids were still sleeping.  They were at school dressed, fed, and hair brushed, at 7:55.  Not bad.

This morning was more standard.  I woke up when I heard Whit come out of his room upstairs.  Minutes later, when I was helping him get dressed, he said, apropos of absolutely nothing: “Sometimes it is hard to keep your head on straight.”  I did a double take.  Why, yes, Whit, it is!

As soon as I stopped laughing, Whit and I headed downstairs to wake Grace up.  She was cranky and teenager-ish getting out of bed, and turned really sour when I told she and Whit that I wouldn’t be picking them up after school today.  “Why?” she whined, and I could tell that she was trying to decide if she was going to get mad or cry.

“Because I have to work,” I replied, trying to brush her hair.

“Why?” she whined again, looking at me plaintively.  My patience on this score is thin.  I spend a LOT of time with my children, happily, and I do not relish the guilt trips Grace has learned to lay on me when I have to be away.

“Because I have to work.  To make money.  And because I like what I do,” I hurriedly repeated the justifications we’ve discussed in detail, ad nauseum.  For the record, Grace proudly tells everyone who asks that she wants to be “a mummy, a veterinarian, and a writer.”  So she’s headed right for this life of juggling.  Tense silence filled the room as I pulled Grace’s hair into pigtails and tried to coax her to get dressed faster.  Whit suddenly chimed in from his spot by the door, where he’d been listening.

“In work, the trophy is money, isn’t it?”

Taken aback (where does he get this stuff?) I swallowed and said, quickly, honestly, “Well, that’s not the trophy for everyone, Whit.” It’s certainly not for me, but I wasn’t going to get into it this morning with the two of them.

After breakfast of Chex and yogurt, we piled into the car.  Grace was still being surly, averting her eyes from mine and sighing dramatically every few minutes.

“Grace, what’s on your mind?” I asked as I turned down Taylor Swift singing Mine and glanced at Grace in the rearview mirror.  She glared back, her jaw set.

“Grace, what’s on your butt?” Whit teased.  Ah.  Yes, he’s still just a five year old boy, too.

Praying means saying thank you

Sunday morning dawned clear and very cold.  Winter has swept in in Thanksgiving’s wake.  I took Grace and Whit to one of my favorite places, Mount Auburn Cemetery.  My children love it there as well; I imagine they pick on the same sense of peace as I do.  Plus, there is a great circular tower (reminding me vividly of a childhood book I read about a castle keep) that is fun to climb and that offers a terrific view of Boston from the top.  There is a little trickling fairy stream, around which magic feels tangible.

Both Grace and Whit really like exploring the cemetery, and their senses seem on high alert there.  They notice the details on the gravestones, the red berries aflame on one bush, the drifts of crunchy brown leaves at the base of another, and the play of the light on the trees.  They have learned through my repeated exhortations to be quiet and respectful in such a sacred space.

It was cold on Sunday, and we did not last long.  My fingers were cold from taking pictures, and because Whit wanted to hold my hand (and I did not have gloves).  I’d let my fingers freeze before I denied him that.  We were walking back to the car when I heard Grace sigh. “What’s up, G?” I asked the back of her head, following behind her on a narrow path.  Whit was right behind me, gripping my icicle-fingers.

“Well, I love this place, Mummy.  But it also makes me sort of sad.”

“You know, Gracie, I know what you mean.  But for some reason I don’t find it creepy, even though it’s a cemetery.”

“Oh, I don’t mean creepy.  Just sad.  You know, that all of these people have died.  And some children too.”

“Well,” I swallowed.  “Sometimes being aware of death can make you really grateful for the life you have.  Right?”

“Yes, you are right.”  She turned to look at me, thoughtful.

As we drove out, we passed the chapel near the front gate.  I mentioned that sometimes I liked to go sit in the chapel.  “What do you do in there?” Whit asked, curious.

“Well, I like to sit and think.  It’s quiet and peaceful.  And to pray.”

“What does it mean, exactly, to pray, Mummy?” Whit pressed on, and I caught his eye in the rearview mirror.  I remembered last year’s discussion of holiness, and had the same sensation of something animate in the car with me, bigger than me.  I wanted to live up to this feeling.  I hesitated.  What does it mean, to pray?

“What do you think it means, Gracie?”  I punted.

She didn’t miss a beat.  “It means, Whitty, saying thank you to God for all the things you are thankful for having in your life.”

I fought a surge of feeling.  Just this weekend I was thinking about how prayer should be about thank you, not about please give me.  About how often we all seem to have it backwards.  And without a shadow of a doubt, my eight year old expressed this more beautifully than I ever could have hoped to.  I looked in the mirror and saw her smiling at him, saw him reach across the backseat to clutch her hand, his faded red-and-blue mitten curling around her bare fingers.

Thank you.