I am enough

I am delighted to be posting at Tracey Clark’s remarkable I Am Enough collaborative today. I adore what Tracey’s project represents and am thrilled to participate. As anyone who visits this space knows, I write mostly about my efforts – sometimes frantic, sometimes futile, sometimes fruitful – to realize that my very own ordinary life is enough. To accept that my spirit, as full of confused yearning as it is, is enough.

Thank you, Tracey, for the privilege of sharing my thoughts in your beautiful space. Please visit here to read my story, and read some of the other gorgeous, honest testimonials that Tracey has featured. Some of my favorite writers have participated in Tracey’s project, and to be included among them is an honor indeed.

I am enough.

Cloudy with a chance

It is my distinct honor to be guest posting today at Karen Maezen Miller’s beautiful site, Cheerio Road. Karen’s book, Hand Wash Cold, is among those that have most moved and touched me in the last few years, and I’ve come to think of her as one of my teachers, one of my shepherds.

What a week it’s been for me with these women whose words and thinking shepherds me (even though they never asked for the job): I was fortunate to meet Katrina Kenison last week, I am going to hear Dani Shapiro tonight (thank you, Aidan!) and here I am reading my own humble words in Karen’s extraordinary space.

If you don’t know Karen’s work, you have an enormous gift in store. Run, don’t walk, to buy Hand Wash Cold. And please click over and read my post, Cloudy With a Chance, and then spend some time immersing yourself in Karen’s world. You won’t want to leave. I never do.

One Way or the Other

So, I read a lot of blogs.  We’ve established that.  Still, I have my very favorites, those that I treasure and hold dear, whose words routinely speak straight to my heart.  Heather’s blog, The Extraordinary Ordinary, is one of those very favorites.  It has been such a joy to get to know her in the past year, to have her insightful answers to Present Tense, and to call her my friend.  I feel very much as though I’ve met a kindred spirit in Heather, and look forward to reading many more of her magical words.

I’m honored to share one of her posts with you today.  I adored this post when I first read it, and I’ve returned to it more than once.  I’m sure it will touch you as it did me.

One Way or the Other

There are dust bunnies. So many. They are under the bed and in me, scurrying across the wooden floors of my home and my heart. They are moving much too fast through the empty, bumping into toys and crayons and dried up play-doh, then coming to a weary stop.

It seems no matter how we try to keep up with them, they are winning. So we sweep up only the ones that are out in the open and then we leave the house, coming and going with the living of everyday life.

We could hold them out in the palms of our hands to show that we have them, but the bunnies float and they spin and we can’t seem to catch them. We push them under the rugs to hold them still.

We ignore them.

We force them to unnoticed parts of our cluttered minds, and move on to do the easier, the more manageable and mundane things. We go through the motions.

This thinking I’m doing about dust bunnies and life began the other day when Ryan was playing with the boys on our bed, wrestling. Arms and legs were flailing and there were giggles and shrieks.

Then Ryan’s coffee mug was knocked to the floor by one of those flailing feet or hands. It fell with a crash, shattering off the nightstand and splashing into a large puddle under our bed. Coffee covered the floor and chased the bunnies.

So we stopped the easier things we were doing and lifted the bedside table, we wiped clean the unseen places, sliding as far as we could across the wood floor under the bed, on our bellies, reaching. It seemed like a gallon of coffee under there, dripping down the walls and oozing into the floorboards.

I sighed and sat back as I saw all the other things that needed cleaning while I was there. Something sticky, dog hair, and those dreaded dust bunnies.

The more I look, the less I want to do this, I thought.

We did not rot the floorboards by leaving that mess that seemed too big. Instead, we were knees to the floor, uncovering the darkest places so long ignored. And then the stubborn bunnies rose in protest, making it even harder. Oh, how they hurried and hunkered with each reach of the broom or rag. They fought to find their way back to the darkest corners, annoyed at being forced out and up.

So we tried harder, we took to chasing them down and wiping them out.

We were cleaning up the dark places, together.

It needed to be done.

It’s much easier to walk away from those same kind of ignored places between us, the ones that itch at the subconscious and tug at the heart, the ones swept under rugs. But even when that goes on too long, unexpectedly but certainly, a destructive wind of change will blow in. The kind of blast that forces us to look under the bed and into the dark corners, because of all that shattered glass.

Then we lift up the rugs, letting up the dusty air, revealing what we’ve told ourselves is just fine the way it is when it’s not.

It breaks the quiet that’s not really peace after all.

It pulls the bunnies from under the rug and puts them in the palms of our hands where we cannot deny them, where we have to grasp them and then take them away from our home, from ourselves.

Sometimes we remember to keep working at a clean house, belly crawling and then grasping and releasing before it all gets out of hand.

At other times, we find ourselves strangely thankful for spilled coffee and broken glass, for the overwhelming messes that pull us down to the dark places, to take a look and make a change.

My detour

I was flattered when Lauren from Embracing the Detour asked me to share the story of my life’s big detour.  The detour that began one Friday morning when, wearing my Madonna-in-concert headset and on a conference call about recruiting plans for the next year, I glanced down at a pregnancy test and saw two pink lines.  I did a double take, finished my sentence about how we should hire more engineers, and then stared at the test, mouth agape in full-blown shock.

That morning changed everything.  Everything about my life but, more importantly, everything about how I see myself and, fundamentally, who I am.

Please go read my story here.  And please stay a while to explore Lauren’s wonderful blog about her own detour.  She inspires me with her commitment to enjoying the journey even as she heads towards a destination that is generally though not specifically clear.  Thanks, Lauren, for hosting my words today.  It is an honor.

Come Away to Sea

Grace was a colicky baby. I was a colicky new mother. Those first few weeks and months involved far more crying than they did sleep. First, I was lost in the 24 hour tilt-a-whirl cycle of newborn-ness where day and night blend into each other in an endless wash of tears, milk, and a general soggy grayness. As a routine slowly, awkward emerged from this murk I started trying to put Grace to bed around the same time every night. This was no small feat. And it was so scary to me that I remember feeling full-blown dread as night approached, feeling each afternoon as the sun went down as though my anxiety, which started in the pit of my stomach, would eat me alive.

I started playing a Martha Stewart lullabye CD at bedtime. I don’t remember where this came from, but I chose it basically at random and put it into the CD player in Grace’s room. The dulcet tones of “Baby Mine” and “Blackbird” accompanied those early evenings when I would rock her in the ivory rocker, nursing her to a calm but not asleep state. I was obsessed with her learning to put herself to sleep. I’d burp her, swaying with her over my shoulder in the darkened room, humming along to the familiar tunes that got even more well known because I was hearing them every single night. Then – oh, careful, oh careful – I would put her on her back in her crib, standing over her as though she was a grenade about to go off. Well, let’s face it, she sort of was. I’d gradually inch backwards out of the room, freezing in my tracks as though caught in a bad act when she turned to watch me. At the beginning of this enterprise my success rate was low but it climbed over time and she eventually became a great sleeper.

I remember so many nights my anxiousness to get on with my evening. Two feelings, truly, coursed through my veins in those evenings: I wanted to have some time by myself, and I wanted my baby to damn well do what I wanted her to do. I wanted her to just obey and go to sleep. I also wanted a couple of precious hours where I could be nobody’s mother. I hate now knowing that I had both of those feelings. Why was I rushing those minutes past? And why did I care so much about her doing what I wanted? I guess it’s normal that I wanted to get some rest – but, still. I wish I had not wished those evenings away. I wish, now, that I could have those baby-drenched evenings back. Every single one of them.

And that CD still sings her to sleep. To this day, she listens to it going to sleep. Her bedroom is next to mine, and every time she goes to the bathroom or anything in the night she turns it on again. In many ways this CD is the soundtrack of my life. I’ve had to replace it twice. I can sing every single song from that CD, though the ones that come to mind most viscerally are Come Away to Sea and Home. I imagine a day when I am walking down the street – or being wheeled – at 80 years old, and I hear an acoustic version of one of those songs. I will be, instantly and powerfully, back in a darkened nursery suffused with the powder smell of baby, a dark-haired infant scrunched up against my chest, rocking her back and forth.

When I think back to that 28 year old woman I feel flickers of empathy for her but mostly I feel frustrated at her, even angry. I wish I could shake her – myself! – by the shoulders and let her know that she would spend the rest of her life wishing she could reach back to live these minutes again. There’s things I’d like to tell her … but I can’t. Of course I could not know that then.  Isn’t this, in fact, the struggle of our lives?

Come Away to Sea (David Wilcox)

The wind is right for sailing
The tide is right to go
So come away to sea with me
There’s things that you should know

There’s things I’d like to tell you
That words can’t seem to say
Unless we’re on this simple craft
Sailing far away

Sail around this sound
Far away from shore
Come away to sea with me
Sail your heart once more

Join me in this simple craft
Welcome to my home
The things I’d like to say to you
Are better said alone

So let your heart sail with me
We’ll cast away from town
And we’ll sail away on music
Inside this simple sound

This simple craft I play upon
Is made from wooden parts
Its never sailed an ocean
But is sure can sail my heart

And if you feel the music
Then we’ve raised another sail
The ocean wraps this world around
The wind will never fail

Inspired by Jo’s Flashback Friday prompt at Mylestones. Thank you Jo!