Alex is taking a finance class. And although finance sounds about as boring to me as watching paint dry (which actually, would be more interesting...), he has a fantastic extra credit assignment, which goes something like this: make a list of 100 things you hope to accomplish before you die. When he told me about the assignment, I immediately exclaimed "Oh! I want to do that too!" Today seems a good day to do this. We went to a funeral of a dear family friend, someone who seemed to embrace doing what he loved to do. And so there is his fingerprint on this list. It just seems fitting. In no particular order:
1. Go to India. I have wanted to go to India since my freshman year of college, when I took a seminar on Indian Civilization. My friend Jenny performed mudras in class. She went to India and brought me back a scarf with bangles. I still wear it today.
2. Reread all of Vonnegut's novels.
3. Go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with Alex, my favorite hiking companion. I am fascinated by pilgrimage in general. It is what I will do for my sabbatical in two years.
4. Learn how to make turducken. Because, why not?
5. Start painting again.
6. Go on a yoga retreat.
7. Finish my dissertation.
8. Reacquaint myself with Italian, well enough to reread Dante and Petrarch and Boccacio.
9. Learn how to play my ukulele.
10. Make quince jam. I have a quince tree. I should make preserves from the fruit. It seems only right.
11. Take my niece to New York and show her the Met and The Cloisters. Take her to a Broadway play, and to Serendipity for frozen hot chocolate.
12. Read all of Aldous Huxley. I haven't. But I have them all. So that's a good start.
13. Go to Petra. And Cappadocia. And anywhere else I can visit monasteries carved from rock.
14. Remember to screw the caps on things and shut the cabinets and so on...this seems like a no-brainer. For me, not so much.
15. Learn how to make all of my mother-in-law's Austrian meals. So that I can make them for our children. And our grandchildren.
16. Which would require children. I would like a child. Just one is good.
17. Keep in touch with old friends.
18. Keep in touch with former students.
19. Learn how to knit. Well. As in better than the kindergarten-looking, 8 foot long scarf that I made a couple of years ago.
20. If I have children, allow them to be children. And allow them to make mistakes. And not worry too much. And love being a child.
21. Learn German well enough to get by in Austria. And teach our children Alex's first language.
22. Teach an art history course.
23. Take a dance class again.
24. Go to Hawaii. My grandmother went there. She said it was her favorite place on earth.
25. Perfect my photography skills.
26. Be better about taking my vitamins.
27. Not be so afraid of karaoke.
28. Write a poem for Gran.
29. Do something meaningful with my Native American heritage.
30. Learn how to make injera. Seriously.
31. Write a book.
32. Actually join a Lupus support group.
33. Learn to sort of enjoy ski culture. Maybe.
34. Go to as many dance performances as possible.
35. Vague, but start a foundation for something. I live in Baltimore, after all.
36. Go back to Tartine and have their salmon a few more times.
37. Design the perfect sock.
38. More dogs.
39. Run in the rain more. I love that.
40. Get better at directions. I have no sense of direction.
41. Read all of Jorge Amado's books again. Make a painting out of them.
42. Learn to bake the perfect loaf of bread. Find someone to teach me this skill.
43. Let go. Just let go.
44. Be authentic.
45. When the wrinkles come, accept them as signs of a life well-lived.
46. But continue to wear sunscreen.
47. Travel, travel travel. That is all.
48. Take a year and live by the sea or the ocean. And write. Cherish every day of that year.
49. Be the good when things are bad.
50. Get better at framing pictures.
51. Get better at hanging pictures.
52. Just because I don't work in a museum anymore doesn't mean I shouldn't go to them. Museums need love.
53. Get over the things I will never be. Celebrate the things I am.
54. Come to terms with winter.
55. Save the seeds. Share them. Keep things generative.
56. Discover an appreciation for the rhododendron, because I currently do not have one.
57. Never lose my love of a good porch.
58. An act of love a day. Just do it.
59. Make sure my students and future unknown potential child do it too.
60. Always write cards.
61. Slow down.
62. Continue to wear my heart on my sleeve.
63. Add a protective layer of Teflon to that heart.
64. Sit in silence daily.
65. Continued wonder.
66. Embrace my introvertedness. It's okay to be this way.
67. And don't let it get in the way of living.
68. Thank Mom and Dad for everything. So much everything.
69. Bonsai? I always wanted to do bonsai, but does it hurt the tree?
70. In 2025, go to West Point for role call. I promised Gran I would.
71. Keep my promises.
72. Make sure future unknown potential child loves to read as much as I do.
73. Relearn the birdsongs.
74. Speaking of birds, find a cool picture of a pelican.
75. Hear Thich Nhat Hanh in person.
76. Go to a Joni Mitchell concert (does she still perform?)
77. Do the little things that make others' lives better.
78. Perfect my malfatti-making. It's almost there.
79. Always forgive.
80. Don't become angry.
81. Don't be a victim to someone else's anger again.
82. Accomplish the thing you didn't imagine you would.
83. Maintain imagination.
84. With future unknown potential child, foster imagination.
85. And may that imagination be used to better some pocket of the world.
86. Be the yin to Alex's yang.
87. Sing more. I'm not half bad.
88. Go back to Calvert Cliffs.
89. Always take stock of what matters.
90. Never let time or busyness prevent me from being appreciative.
91. Stop losing things.
92. Bring love wherever it is needed or wanted.
93. Sardinia because why not?
94. Portugal because why not?
95. A new set of pastels because Granddad would be proud to see me sketching and creating again.
96. Let the light in.
97. Keep the cold - temperature-wise and personality-wise - out.
98. Give more than you get.
99. Always acknowledge grace in others (inner and outer).
100. Let what survives of me be love.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Eighteen Months (December 2012)
On Thursday, he turned eighteen months old. That morning, I gathered him in my arms and he gathered me in his, and to mark the occasion, we blew bubbles in his bedroom. He sat Buddha-style in my lap: "Bubble? Bubble? Bubble!" he exclaimed, and he smiled, all magic, all-knowing, all little boy. All of a sudden.
I brought him into the bathroom with me while I showered so that the hot steam could loosen his winter's cough. He lined up the bottles of lotion and bubble bath, counting them " Three, three, THREE!", moving them from one area of the gray tiled floor to another. "Three!" He pokes his head around the corner of the shower curtain. "Hiiiiiiiiii," his sing-song voice cutting through the steam as a beam of light.
In the evening, after work and play, and a greeting from the neighborhood kitten, I put him in his "grandpa" flannel pajamas, buried my face in his neck, and said goodnight before leaving to meet a friend. He cries when I leave sometimes - real tears, the kind that taste like innocence, loss and love all at once. But in the moment of my leaving, he was busy at play with his daddy, bouncing yo-yo fashion on the couch, his flyaway hair full of static and boyish rebellion.
On Friday, before he awoke, I read three Emily Rapp pieces, and wept bitterly that her son has to die so soon. I drank my coffee by the Christmas tree, and watched him sleep on the monitor, his little bottom in the air.
Eighteen months can be measured and not. Before we know it, he will be "Three, three, THREE!" and our hearts will expand in tandem. May he count his days of innocence, and may we treasure them too.
I brought him into the bathroom with me while I showered so that the hot steam could loosen his winter's cough. He lined up the bottles of lotion and bubble bath, counting them " Three, three, THREE!", moving them from one area of the gray tiled floor to another. "Three!" He pokes his head around the corner of the shower curtain. "Hiiiiiiiiii," his sing-song voice cutting through the steam as a beam of light.
In the evening, after work and play, and a greeting from the neighborhood kitten, I put him in his "grandpa" flannel pajamas, buried my face in his neck, and said goodnight before leaving to meet a friend. He cries when I leave sometimes - real tears, the kind that taste like innocence, loss and love all at once. But in the moment of my leaving, he was busy at play with his daddy, bouncing yo-yo fashion on the couch, his flyaway hair full of static and boyish rebellion.
On Friday, before he awoke, I read three Emily Rapp pieces, and wept bitterly that her son has to die so soon. I drank my coffee by the Christmas tree, and watched him sleep on the monitor, his little bottom in the air.
Eighteen months can be measured and not. Before we know it, he will be "Three, three, THREE!" and our hearts will expand in tandem. May he count his days of innocence, and may we treasure them too.
Six bowling balls are in the trunk (2009)
Today I took a cab home from work. I had groceries. Lots of them. It was steamy piping hot and I had purchased vast quantities of aloe juice. Because, you know, I was thirsty. My work bag, I will freely admit, is vaguely Mary Poppins-ish in its size, but more so in the amount of things I manage to cram into it, which today included my laptop, a textbook, my planner, the school directory, two bottles of mineral water, a granola bar and one very sad apple, one bottle of coconut water, a stack of 70 student files that I brought home to read, random pens that work and don't work, and six highlighters. Oh - and a bottle of wine from a dear friend.
So I decided to cab it. When the driver arrived some minutes later, I didn't recognize him at first. Some people probably don't care about who drives them, or their lives. Some people want silence. I get that. A cab can be a meditative pause when one can exhale and not expect the person driving the car to say testily, "What's up with you? Why are you sighing?" It's a gift of time for many, and that makes sense.
I wrote previously about my love of a good cab, and the stories collected through conversation and fellowship. It's kind of like an internal version of Humans of New York, without the artsy photography, the recording of a person's experience, and the posting on Facebook. The post-it note memory instead is stuck to my heart as a really neat experience with an equally inspiring soul. Cab conversations keep me going.
So today, with my groceries and my aloe juice and highlighters, and those blasted ringlets that refuse to conform to my ponytail tickling my neck, I may have said something along the lines of "BLESS YOUR APPEARANCE AT THIS VERY MOMENT." It was an all-caps declaration. And then I realized in all that I was carrying, I didn't recognize Babu. He'd grown some facial hair. He too was hot. And tired. In that way that Babu has though, he said "Aww Paige, what has you down?"
Sometimes shame creeps along slowly, that snail that glides dolefully up one's neck. Other times, it hits one like a Mack Truck. Shame on you, Paige! He's hot, too! He's got things he's carrying! And you don't know a quarter of it! I did know that Babu has been trying to get his family to the States. They live in Nigeria: a wife, a son, two daughters. He misses birthdays and milestones. He misses the first lost tooth, the first day of school, his wife's cooking. "No matter," he shared with me one day. "We will find our way back to one another somehow, and when it is right."
Patience of Job, I say. And then some.
Today, Babu saw my impressive load and panic danced across his face. I think I witnessed at least five expressions in about ten seconds. "Ummmm...." he said, rubbing the new addition of the goatee. "The thing is Paige, six bowling balls are in the trunk."
I love it when people make statements of this sort, because they could easily be the beginning of a story. Sometimes, such declarations are stories without further embellishment. "Six bowling balls are in the trunk" is a terrific example of the mundane and the absurd, bound into one.
"Babu," I said. "I didn't know you bowled." At this point, I'm pretty sure the pineapple popsicles I purchased had melted.
"Oh I don't," he said.
"A friend bought them off of Craigslist and I picked them up for him. But he lives in Pennsylvania, and we were supposed to meet but he was deported so I just have them in my trunk now. They are just so big. I don't want them in my apartment."
Full stop. Unaware of frozen goods that were no longer frozen. Unaware of the bead of sweat trickling down the back of my neck. Completely oblivious to the Mary Poppins bag and its weight.
The weight of six bowling balls that Babu carried, in his car, unsure of where, when, or how to put them down. The weight of his friend recently deported, who apparently loves bowling. The weight of the car driving these bowling balls as passengers to so many destinations, none of which were theirs. Six bowling balls that had a life before they found their way to Babu's trunk. Six bowling balls that now spoke to Babu of the burden of loss and responsibility to a friend and carrying what is yours and what is not. That's a lot of weight.
And it also meant that Babu was paying more for gas, his trunk was full, and the back of his car sort of sagged in resignation.
We piled my bags next to me in the backseat of the cab. We talked about bowling and how heavy bowling balls are. We talked about the heat and how oppressive it was. We talked about air fresheners in cars, and how he can't find he likes.
When I said goodbye to Babu, I suggested that maybe he try to sell the bowling balls on Craigslist. He shook his head, rubbed his chin with his left hand and said, "Maybe he'll come back."
Maybe he'll come back.
So I decided to cab it. When the driver arrived some minutes later, I didn't recognize him at first. Some people probably don't care about who drives them, or their lives. Some people want silence. I get that. A cab can be a meditative pause when one can exhale and not expect the person driving the car to say testily, "What's up with you? Why are you sighing?" It's a gift of time for many, and that makes sense.
I wrote previously about my love of a good cab, and the stories collected through conversation and fellowship. It's kind of like an internal version of Humans of New York, without the artsy photography, the recording of a person's experience, and the posting on Facebook. The post-it note memory instead is stuck to my heart as a really neat experience with an equally inspiring soul. Cab conversations keep me going.
So today, with my groceries and my aloe juice and highlighters, and those blasted ringlets that refuse to conform to my ponytail tickling my neck, I may have said something along the lines of "BLESS YOUR APPEARANCE AT THIS VERY MOMENT." It was an all-caps declaration. And then I realized in all that I was carrying, I didn't recognize Babu. He'd grown some facial hair. He too was hot. And tired. In that way that Babu has though, he said "Aww Paige, what has you down?"
Sometimes shame creeps along slowly, that snail that glides dolefully up one's neck. Other times, it hits one like a Mack Truck. Shame on you, Paige! He's hot, too! He's got things he's carrying! And you don't know a quarter of it! I did know that Babu has been trying to get his family to the States. They live in Nigeria: a wife, a son, two daughters. He misses birthdays and milestones. He misses the first lost tooth, the first day of school, his wife's cooking. "No matter," he shared with me one day. "We will find our way back to one another somehow, and when it is right."
Patience of Job, I say. And then some.
Today, Babu saw my impressive load and panic danced across his face. I think I witnessed at least five expressions in about ten seconds. "Ummmm...." he said, rubbing the new addition of the goatee. "The thing is Paige, six bowling balls are in the trunk."
I love it when people make statements of this sort, because they could easily be the beginning of a story. Sometimes, such declarations are stories without further embellishment. "Six bowling balls are in the trunk" is a terrific example of the mundane and the absurd, bound into one.
"Babu," I said. "I didn't know you bowled." At this point, I'm pretty sure the pineapple popsicles I purchased had melted.
"Oh I don't," he said.
"A friend bought them off of Craigslist and I picked them up for him. But he lives in Pennsylvania, and we were supposed to meet but he was deported so I just have them in my trunk now. They are just so big. I don't want them in my apartment."
Full stop. Unaware of frozen goods that were no longer frozen. Unaware of the bead of sweat trickling down the back of my neck. Completely oblivious to the Mary Poppins bag and its weight.
The weight of six bowling balls that Babu carried, in his car, unsure of where, when, or how to put them down. The weight of his friend recently deported, who apparently loves bowling. The weight of the car driving these bowling balls as passengers to so many destinations, none of which were theirs. Six bowling balls that had a life before they found their way to Babu's trunk. Six bowling balls that now spoke to Babu of the burden of loss and responsibility to a friend and carrying what is yours and what is not. That's a lot of weight.
And it also meant that Babu was paying more for gas, his trunk was full, and the back of his car sort of sagged in resignation.
We piled my bags next to me in the backseat of the cab. We talked about bowling and how heavy bowling balls are. We talked about the heat and how oppressive it was. We talked about air fresheners in cars, and how he can't find he likes.
When I said goodbye to Babu, I suggested that maybe he try to sell the bowling balls on Craigslist. He shook his head, rubbed his chin with his left hand and said, "Maybe he'll come back."
Maybe he'll come back.
Smile breathe and go slowly (2010)
Yesterday I returned from three weeks in New England, two of which were spent in Maine's Acadia National Park. Today in Maryland it is 102 degrees, and if I so much as blink, I perspire. This is saying something coming from someone who would happily spend her life in tank tops and bare feet. When we left Maine, it was 75 degrees and the air smelled like that wonderful combination of pine needles and ocean. I cried. Several times.
Upon visiting Acadia, a Brit once quipped with a rueful sigh, "I do wish we had fought harder to keep it." The meaning of this statement was not lost on me as we celebrated the 4th of July last evening. Maine is home to me in ways that are inexplicable. I didn't grow up going there as a child. I don't have any relatives living there. I can't claim to have visited dozens of times. But it tugs at my heart and the moment I leave I am mentally putting away part of my paycheck so that I can return next summer. As I unpacked today, I assembled cairns around our house from the stones that Alex and I collected while we were hiking - an odd homage to wayfinding perhaps, but also an important visual reminder to continue navigating my life with the simplicity that can sometimes elude one on a day-to-day basis.
And this is what I love about my time in Maine. It all starts with how you frame your view. Our view, waking up each morning, was of the harbor. If anyone has had the gift of waking up to a sunrise, and not just noting it and moving on but sitting in the sunrise, well they're on to something.
The scent of pine and ocean cannot be successfully bottled. It can't and it shouldn't be. What one can do is sit in the moment of sensory bliss. And share it with someone. Because someone else deserves this too, always.
A meal can stretch for hours or minutes. At home, meals are fuel more often than they are sharing a memory. Maine offers the latter. Maine offers shoulders to assume their rightful place (not hunched under the ears in bodily protest).
Mornings are my favorite time of day. And they go slowly. As the arc of sun slips into view, and I am up alone, sipping tea and watching, minutes are pearls. They hold one in quiet reverie: "Sip this up. Sip it slowly. Let it work its way into your heart. Breathe it in."
Breathe it in.
Upon visiting Acadia, a Brit once quipped with a rueful sigh, "I do wish we had fought harder to keep it." The meaning of this statement was not lost on me as we celebrated the 4th of July last evening. Maine is home to me in ways that are inexplicable. I didn't grow up going there as a child. I don't have any relatives living there. I can't claim to have visited dozens of times. But it tugs at my heart and the moment I leave I am mentally putting away part of my paycheck so that I can return next summer. As I unpacked today, I assembled cairns around our house from the stones that Alex and I collected while we were hiking - an odd homage to wayfinding perhaps, but also an important visual reminder to continue navigating my life with the simplicity that can sometimes elude one on a day-to-day basis.
And this is what I love about my time in Maine. It all starts with how you frame your view. Our view, waking up each morning, was of the harbor. If anyone has had the gift of waking up to a sunrise, and not just noting it and moving on but sitting in the sunrise, well they're on to something.
The scent of pine and ocean cannot be successfully bottled. It can't and it shouldn't be. What one can do is sit in the moment of sensory bliss. And share it with someone. Because someone else deserves this too, always.
A meal can stretch for hours or minutes. At home, meals are fuel more often than they are sharing a memory. Maine offers the latter. Maine offers shoulders to assume their rightful place (not hunched under the ears in bodily protest).
Mornings are my favorite time of day. And they go slowly. As the arc of sun slips into view, and I am up alone, sipping tea and watching, minutes are pearls. They hold one in quiet reverie: "Sip this up. Sip it slowly. Let it work its way into your heart. Breathe it in."
Breathe it in.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Aria for K 2.15.14
2.15.14
Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)
W.H. Auden
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
A Sarah Lawrence classmate gently crossed over yesterday - on a day that celebrates love in all its various forms, and the very day that marked the second date she had with her husband. Reading his words this morning - words wrought of tenderness, respect, and piercing loss -I heaved and sighed. And I am stilled. During a season of endless and unforgiving snow that blankets not just my beloved and so very missed greenness, but also any promise of warmth to come, the words hang suspended - icicles that refuse to melt.
I didn't know K. all that well...I knew the cadence of her Italian from our Italian class together, and the slight envy I had that she, with her equally transcendent voice, made the language ever more beautiful. I recall her raucous laughter, which rang down the hill to Bates (our dining hall) - a bell that jolted you into LIFE. She walked with confidence and her smile made you fall in love with her spirit. She was never lacking for admirers. She never seemed to know how not to love.
An insidious cancer claimed her life, but not her spirit. She tackled her cancer with gusto, grit, and a healthy dose of anger, confronting the "what ifs" with a candor that gripped my heart. In one post, she mentioned getting all of her kids' spring clothing ready and labeled for her husband. I thought of one of my favorite films, Tampopo, which features a memorable vignette of a dying mother cooking one last meal for her family, and then dying while they ate it. I thought of my own paternal grandmother, who, while dying of liver cancer, filled freezers full of meals for my grandfather. I thought of saying goodbye to our beloved family friend this time last year (he loved old maps with the same peculiar passion that I do), and as my tears spilled into the glass of water brought to me at his bidding, he took my hand in his, gently and firmly, and HE said goodbye. He offered me grace. And I thought, not for the first time that this is how the dying say goodbye - often with much more grace than those they leave behind.
As I watched K.'s facebook posts decrease, I began the internal process of saying goodbye to another kindred soul whose ebullience helped me from afar more than I realized. Until now. And with it, I am saying goodbye to something about my time at Sarah Lawrence too. We think we are invincible, most of us. We look to that august time traipsing up and down SLC walkways as pure, unchangeable, perfection in four years. At least I have. K. represents this chapter of innocence and freedom in the purest of forms because, by all accounts, she remained that unchanged through adulthood - with a boisterous and unbridled laugh, with a steely will, and with a love for this gift we so often squander: Life.
It is hard to recognize that we say goodbye to innocence in so many ways long after we leave childhood behind.
And until the days stretch a little longer...until the crocus peeps its head through the thaw...until that smell of spring wafts through a cracked window...until our hearts feel a little less heavy, Auden has it right.
Because sometimes, we just don't know what else to do.
Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)
W.H. Auden
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
A Sarah Lawrence classmate gently crossed over yesterday - on a day that celebrates love in all its various forms, and the very day that marked the second date she had with her husband. Reading his words this morning - words wrought of tenderness, respect, and piercing loss -I heaved and sighed. And I am stilled. During a season of endless and unforgiving snow that blankets not just my beloved and so very missed greenness, but also any promise of warmth to come, the words hang suspended - icicles that refuse to melt.
I didn't know K. all that well...I knew the cadence of her Italian from our Italian class together, and the slight envy I had that she, with her equally transcendent voice, made the language ever more beautiful. I recall her raucous laughter, which rang down the hill to Bates (our dining hall) - a bell that jolted you into LIFE. She walked with confidence and her smile made you fall in love with her spirit. She was never lacking for admirers. She never seemed to know how not to love.
An insidious cancer claimed her life, but not her spirit. She tackled her cancer with gusto, grit, and a healthy dose of anger, confronting the "what ifs" with a candor that gripped my heart. In one post, she mentioned getting all of her kids' spring clothing ready and labeled for her husband. I thought of one of my favorite films, Tampopo, which features a memorable vignette of a dying mother cooking one last meal for her family, and then dying while they ate it. I thought of my own paternal grandmother, who, while dying of liver cancer, filled freezers full of meals for my grandfather. I thought of saying goodbye to our beloved family friend this time last year (he loved old maps with the same peculiar passion that I do), and as my tears spilled into the glass of water brought to me at his bidding, he took my hand in his, gently and firmly, and HE said goodbye. He offered me grace. And I thought, not for the first time that this is how the dying say goodbye - often with much more grace than those they leave behind.
As I watched K.'s facebook posts decrease, I began the internal process of saying goodbye to another kindred soul whose ebullience helped me from afar more than I realized. Until now. And with it, I am saying goodbye to something about my time at Sarah Lawrence too. We think we are invincible, most of us. We look to that august time traipsing up and down SLC walkways as pure, unchangeable, perfection in four years. At least I have. K. represents this chapter of innocence and freedom in the purest of forms because, by all accounts, she remained that unchanged through adulthood - with a boisterous and unbridled laugh, with a steely will, and with a love for this gift we so often squander: Life.
It is hard to recognize that we say goodbye to innocence in so many ways long after we leave childhood behind.
And until the days stretch a little longer...until the crocus peeps its head through the thaw...until that smell of spring wafts through a cracked window...until our hearts feel a little less heavy, Auden has it right.
Because sometimes, we just don't know what else to do.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Nietzsche Has a Point
"We love life not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving."
Yesterday was a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." It just was.
And I know that it could be exponentially worse (having read this morning of a poet executed for writing. Writing.), so why is it that nearly every interaction, emotion, movement etc...felt like sandpaper rubbing me to the point of complete and utter vulnerability? With each interaction that left me feeling raw, I kept returning to the inside - the part that feels tender, not raw. And I said to myself, "find the love in this." The vulnerability: perhaps I choose to feel. I think that makes sense. My armor is paper thin, which is surprising given some chapters in my life. Perhaps my defense, so to speak, is to find the love. I proffer it in spades; I look for it in equal measure. In the sage words of Nietzsche, I am used to loving, above all else.
Find the love when a student stumbles in ways I have no salve to offer.
Find the love when I am in a meeting and a litany of anger is directed at me, because even if I haven't caused the anger, I am the person who hears it and hopefully helps to find solutions.
Find the love when after a day that felt like one hundred days (in a Groundhog Day sort of way), a sweet and sensitive toddler has an extended temper tantrum for which I have no response, save a fumbled request for ten minutes to collect myself, and find the love for this moment with him.
Ten Minutes.
We are told to love ourselves. We tell ourselves to love who we are, warts and all. Being "used to loving" entails the personal loving of people, things, moments that no one else embraces. I tell others this. I grapple with how to give this to myself. I fail fantastically in successfully and lovingly articulating my need for ten minutes: a "Please Pass Go" freebie for behaving like my very own toddler. I struggle mightily - fitfully, even - to recognize that when I ask for my Ten Minutes, I have passed the point of doing so productively, respectfully, lovingly. I struggle because the heart on my sleeve, which cries out "LOVE," sobs in turn... due to my own shortcomings in that department.
Yesterday is in the tender past. The Ten Minutes have been filed away, to be replaced with a beautiful and serene morning, with birds leaping from branch to branch chirping in joyful anticipation of spring, with a good cup of tea, with the same toddler who gave Maria Callas a run for her money yesterday. Today, he is back to living love. He has returned to the reflexive act of burying his sweet head of curls and innocence into the crook of my neck, washing clean the spoiled goods of yesterday. I remind myself that it is easier to love than to, out of that defensive mechanism that kicks into high gear, not. That makes me love life, in the crystallized moments that offer a romantic wonder at this great world and all of the singular people who populate mine.There is a lot in life to love, and the bad days remind us of the importance that lies in the loving.
So on a pristine, pure morning, be USED to loving. Make it the norm, not the exception. Breathe it in and out....and when the inevitable stumble happens, begin the breathing anew. Salvation lies in loving, and while at times, my own personal fog obfuscates loving WELL, I have to hope that the loving is our lighthouse. And as we breath in and out, with diffuse beams and a singular spotlight that says, "Yes! This one moment is all for the heart!", each moment is a beacon.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Carrickfergus
"But I'll spend my days in endless roaming; soft is the grass, my bed is free."
-Carrickfergus
I left the window next to my bed open last night, because it is unseasonably warm, and because I relish fresh air at all times, but there is something singularly pure about nighttime air. I woke this morning to the sound of rain, and just listened. It felt as though I imagine peace tastes. I love these unexpected moments of pause, and the feeling that for one brief breath, the world is doing a happy sigh. The holidays begin in earnest tomorrow, and I have a lot to do. So much to do that I shouldn't be taking this time to write, but I went to bed last night writing this and woke up writing it, and figured that I should take the hint, and WRITE. Write about what?
Well, fortunately there are people in my life who have more focus than I, and whose focus both aids my vision (spiritually speaking) and sharpens my intentions. I was asked to reflect on my year - well, before the year ends - and since I have a week and change to do so, it makes more sense to reflect while I'm still IN it. As opposed to standing on the brink of new and old, and looking back over my shoulder to 2013 while anticipating the tabula rasa of 2014.
The thing about New Year's (as in the holiday) is that I really don't like it so much. Part of it has to do with the fact that for me, staying up through midnight fills me with mild dread. I do not like staying up late and I love/need my sleep. Also: I dislike those little horn things that people blow when the clock strikes midnight.To my ears, that is not a joyous sound. But these are small, external protests that I recognize don't carry too much weight in the scheme of things. New Year's Eve challenges the introvert in me to move into another year with others, when in fact, I like the quiet contemplation of home and hearth much more.
Additionally, we don't wake up the next day all that different, and I am a firm believer that renewal and resolutions can and should happen at any moment. The concept of time and how to mark its passage is a mystifying one to me, and I suppose the lot of us NEED a moment to mark change, to look for fresh hope in the flipping of a calendar. I get that. And some years are better than others - I think maybe what I am trying to do is look beyond the "better" and "worse" categories to the place of simple and happy acceptance. Acceptance is one of the many cornerstones of love. It is so much easier to accept and adjust the sails, reciting personal mantras of love than it is to fight gale winds thinking that we have any power over Nature - or others, for that matter. We don't. Nor should we.
If I could summarize my year, it would be through the words of a friend of a dear friend: "It's up to each of us to practice love. Don't waste any of your breaths."
Don't waste any of your breaths. In a year when death and illness have been waiting at every monthly flipping of the calendar, this message grabbed hold of my heart in the profoundest of ways. Watching a dear family friend struggling to breathe as we talked over his bowl of soup and I sat next to him holding his hand not wanting him to leave us, I thought about his labored breathing and wished for him that his last breaths would be sweet. Losing a student who chose to take her last breath, and watching our school community have our collective breath knocked out of us, without warning, without the armor to protect our hearts from the heaves and sighs that attend such loss. And so on, with others who left us too early, too suddenly, too painfully...learning through this that when we BREATHE, we have choice. Choice in how we love, how we forgive, how we greet and conclude each day. Choice in how our own breath speaks.
2013 has held a whole lot of questioning in its palm, and with every question, a flurry fog of few answers. CHOICE felt burdensome to me at times, which is really not all that helpful to those around me, and in the end, robs me of the whole breathing in the moment thing that I so deeply cherish. It was in autumn that my own resolutions emerged like a gale force wind: BREATHE, Paige. Breathe and practice love simultaneously. It's not that I didn't do this before, but rather that I wanted to be more intentional and mindful of the love that I was putting out.
John Green noted that "We tilt our lives to catch the wind." In May, I shared these words in a speech I gave about the gift of teaching. In June, our sweet magical son turned two and his relentless wonder at this magical world opened up like a Jack-in-the-Box, with so many words - his first "I love you"; his first "NO!"; his first "Why?" All of this LOVE shared so openly in a singsong voice, and with laughter in his beautiful eyes. 2013 has been a year of wonder.
So this is what life is, year in and year out. For every loss, there is more to gain - whether it is in the way of a shifted perspective, a slowing of the breath, or new souls who join us in the breathing. It is how we adjust our sails to catch the breeze in ways that ensure that everyone around us knows the power of the love we proffer. It is in the practice of love, which YES, requires practice. And it is in choosing how we spend each breath, guarding them, not wasting them, and breathing out love as we go, remembering that seas will be wide, and endless roaming need not be lonely.
Carrickfergus
-Carrickfergus
I left the window next to my bed open last night, because it is unseasonably warm, and because I relish fresh air at all times, but there is something singularly pure about nighttime air. I woke this morning to the sound of rain, and just listened. It felt as though I imagine peace tastes. I love these unexpected moments of pause, and the feeling that for one brief breath, the world is doing a happy sigh. The holidays begin in earnest tomorrow, and I have a lot to do. So much to do that I shouldn't be taking this time to write, but I went to bed last night writing this and woke up writing it, and figured that I should take the hint, and WRITE. Write about what?
Well, fortunately there are people in my life who have more focus than I, and whose focus both aids my vision (spiritually speaking) and sharpens my intentions. I was asked to reflect on my year - well, before the year ends - and since I have a week and change to do so, it makes more sense to reflect while I'm still IN it. As opposed to standing on the brink of new and old, and looking back over my shoulder to 2013 while anticipating the tabula rasa of 2014.
The thing about New Year's (as in the holiday) is that I really don't like it so much. Part of it has to do with the fact that for me, staying up through midnight fills me with mild dread. I do not like staying up late and I love/need my sleep. Also: I dislike those little horn things that people blow when the clock strikes midnight.To my ears, that is not a joyous sound. But these are small, external protests that I recognize don't carry too much weight in the scheme of things. New Year's Eve challenges the introvert in me to move into another year with others, when in fact, I like the quiet contemplation of home and hearth much more.
Additionally, we don't wake up the next day all that different, and I am a firm believer that renewal and resolutions can and should happen at any moment. The concept of time and how to mark its passage is a mystifying one to me, and I suppose the lot of us NEED a moment to mark change, to look for fresh hope in the flipping of a calendar. I get that. And some years are better than others - I think maybe what I am trying to do is look beyond the "better" and "worse" categories to the place of simple and happy acceptance. Acceptance is one of the many cornerstones of love. It is so much easier to accept and adjust the sails, reciting personal mantras of love than it is to fight gale winds thinking that we have any power over Nature - or others, for that matter. We don't. Nor should we.
If I could summarize my year, it would be through the words of a friend of a dear friend: "It's up to each of us to practice love. Don't waste any of your breaths."
Don't waste any of your breaths. In a year when death and illness have been waiting at every monthly flipping of the calendar, this message grabbed hold of my heart in the profoundest of ways. Watching a dear family friend struggling to breathe as we talked over his bowl of soup and I sat next to him holding his hand not wanting him to leave us, I thought about his labored breathing and wished for him that his last breaths would be sweet. Losing a student who chose to take her last breath, and watching our school community have our collective breath knocked out of us, without warning, without the armor to protect our hearts from the heaves and sighs that attend such loss. And so on, with others who left us too early, too suddenly, too painfully...learning through this that when we BREATHE, we have choice. Choice in how we love, how we forgive, how we greet and conclude each day. Choice in how our own breath speaks.
2013 has held a whole lot of questioning in its palm, and with every question, a flurry fog of few answers. CHOICE felt burdensome to me at times, which is really not all that helpful to those around me, and in the end, robs me of the whole breathing in the moment thing that I so deeply cherish. It was in autumn that my own resolutions emerged like a gale force wind: BREATHE, Paige. Breathe and practice love simultaneously. It's not that I didn't do this before, but rather that I wanted to be more intentional and mindful of the love that I was putting out.
John Green noted that "We tilt our lives to catch the wind." In May, I shared these words in a speech I gave about the gift of teaching. In June, our sweet magical son turned two and his relentless wonder at this magical world opened up like a Jack-in-the-Box, with so many words - his first "I love you"; his first "NO!"; his first "Why?" All of this LOVE shared so openly in a singsong voice, and with laughter in his beautiful eyes. 2013 has been a year of wonder.
So this is what life is, year in and year out. For every loss, there is more to gain - whether it is in the way of a shifted perspective, a slowing of the breath, or new souls who join us in the breathing. It is how we adjust our sails to catch the breeze in ways that ensure that everyone around us knows the power of the love we proffer. It is in the practice of love, which YES, requires practice. And it is in choosing how we spend each breath, guarding them, not wasting them, and breathing out love as we go, remembering that seas will be wide, and endless roaming need not be lonely.
Carrickfergus
Sunday, November 10, 2013
On sunrooms and courtyards
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."”
-C.S. Lewis
It is an early Sunday morning and my sweet son stands in his crib, asking for his Yizzy. "Where did she go?" "Where is she?" He repeats this earnestly, his nose pressed against mine, in hopes that if he asks enough times, she will magically appear. Two-year olds are good at never giving up on hope. They are also remarkably good at sussing out the innately good people from the not-so-good.
Not to be deterred by his quest to find his Yizzy, he then suggests going "to the sunroom" - he is convinced she lives there (I mean, in all seriousness, who wouldn't?), and will often come downstairs in the morning, expecting to see her in the sunroom, where his toys are and his memories are made, and where the sun comes in just at the moment it is most needed. It's a pretty magical place. I assure him that we will see her at school, and he seems okay with that...until we drive home again in the evening: "Yizzy in the sunroom?" It is almost a daily occurrence.
At school, all of the girls - my high school students - want his attention, which is equal parts endearing and also overwhelming for a little boy surrounded by so many big girls, all of whom know HIM, but few to which he can put a name to a face. He is slow to warm to most people (excepting one sophomore who was his first CRUSH and who had him at hello), but once you are firmly in his circle, you have his heart completely.
And then there is Lizzy.
Lizzy (aka Liz, aka Elizabeth, aka Lizzy Lou, aka Lizard...) came into our lives a few short months ago. She has a laugh that is contagious- it brings a kind of immediate joy to your heart that leaves you in a better mood for the rest of the day. She has an understated and very mature ease about her that really does force you to stop what you're doing and just sort of marvel at the thoughtfulness and warmth with which she interacts with her world, despite some of the reasons why she may not feel so joyous at times. We all have our stories, and hers has been hard.
In the traditional sense, she is my student and I, her teacher...but oftentimes, it feels the other way around. And reflexively, she has become family to us in ways that make one thankful for the small miracles that turn into bigger ones over time. It took no effort on her part to work her way deep into my heart, and very little effort to win the affections of Ezra, who looks to her as his own personal lighthouse - the person with whom he connects at school in the mornings, who makes him feel safe, who plays ball with him and teaches him funny faces. She is the person he clamors to see when we go to school, SHE is the person who understands that he likes being spoken to directly, without the high-pitched sing-song that so many of the girls lovingly use to greet him. She gets him. Without fanfare, she has won his whole heart, not on the level of crush, but almost on the level of older sibling. "HIS Yizzy" - this declaration of possession - is akin to saying that she is of his tribe, his people, and that means something so much more.
For me, she is as much a piece of my soul as anyone else in my life. It is more often than not that when in the same room, we have the same response to a question someone has asked, to the point that one student laughingly noted "You two are like the same person!" She can read my mood in a second, and knows when to make me laugh, and when to give a hug - these are things that most adults fail to do, so it is especially rare that a teenager with so much happening in her own life steps so seamlessly out of her orbit to offer her presence in mine. And she has allowed me into her life too, which is no simple task. To express one's heartaches and struggles is rarely a painless process and it hasn't been easy for her. Sometimes these moments are born due to the person with whom one is sharing, and sometimes it is about the setting: sitting in the courtyard of our school one afternoon, she shared some of the challenges she faces, and we sat in the perfect sunlight, with the perfect trees against a perfectly blue sky, and somehow even the hardest of struggles seemed better articulated, and more authentically felt in that snapshot of, well, perfection.
And we realize that these are struggles we can face. And we can overcome them, too. Sometimes it just takes a courtyard or a sunroom to realize this beautiful truth.
More often than not, it has to do with the members of that selected tribe we cull together, those special individuals who fit into the patterns of light and shadow that dance in our sunrooms and courtyards. These are the people who teach us about the wide expanse of family and what it really means. Thank you, Lizzy, for doing this with your whole heart, and for being part of our tribe.
-C.S. Lewis
It is an early Sunday morning and my sweet son stands in his crib, asking for his Yizzy. "Where did she go?" "Where is she?" He repeats this earnestly, his nose pressed against mine, in hopes that if he asks enough times, she will magically appear. Two-year olds are good at never giving up on hope. They are also remarkably good at sussing out the innately good people from the not-so-good.
Not to be deterred by his quest to find his Yizzy, he then suggests going "to the sunroom" - he is convinced she lives there (I mean, in all seriousness, who wouldn't?), and will often come downstairs in the morning, expecting to see her in the sunroom, where his toys are and his memories are made, and where the sun comes in just at the moment it is most needed. It's a pretty magical place. I assure him that we will see her at school, and he seems okay with that...until we drive home again in the evening: "Yizzy in the sunroom?" It is almost a daily occurrence.
At school, all of the girls - my high school students - want his attention, which is equal parts endearing and also overwhelming for a little boy surrounded by so many big girls, all of whom know HIM, but few to which he can put a name to a face. He is slow to warm to most people (excepting one sophomore who was his first CRUSH and who had him at hello), but once you are firmly in his circle, you have his heart completely.
And then there is Lizzy.
Lizzy (aka Liz, aka Elizabeth, aka Lizzy Lou, aka Lizard...) came into our lives a few short months ago. She has a laugh that is contagious- it brings a kind of immediate joy to your heart that leaves you in a better mood for the rest of the day. She has an understated and very mature ease about her that really does force you to stop what you're doing and just sort of marvel at the thoughtfulness and warmth with which she interacts with her world, despite some of the reasons why she may not feel so joyous at times. We all have our stories, and hers has been hard.
In the traditional sense, she is my student and I, her teacher...but oftentimes, it feels the other way around. And reflexively, she has become family to us in ways that make one thankful for the small miracles that turn into bigger ones over time. It took no effort on her part to work her way deep into my heart, and very little effort to win the affections of Ezra, who looks to her as his own personal lighthouse - the person with whom he connects at school in the mornings, who makes him feel safe, who plays ball with him and teaches him funny faces. She is the person he clamors to see when we go to school, SHE is the person who understands that he likes being spoken to directly, without the high-pitched sing-song that so many of the girls lovingly use to greet him. She gets him. Without fanfare, she has won his whole heart, not on the level of crush, but almost on the level of older sibling. "HIS Yizzy" - this declaration of possession - is akin to saying that she is of his tribe, his people, and that means something so much more.
For me, she is as much a piece of my soul as anyone else in my life. It is more often than not that when in the same room, we have the same response to a question someone has asked, to the point that one student laughingly noted "You two are like the same person!" She can read my mood in a second, and knows when to make me laugh, and when to give a hug - these are things that most adults fail to do, so it is especially rare that a teenager with so much happening in her own life steps so seamlessly out of her orbit to offer her presence in mine. And she has allowed me into her life too, which is no simple task. To express one's heartaches and struggles is rarely a painless process and it hasn't been easy for her. Sometimes these moments are born due to the person with whom one is sharing, and sometimes it is about the setting: sitting in the courtyard of our school one afternoon, she shared some of the challenges she faces, and we sat in the perfect sunlight, with the perfect trees against a perfectly blue sky, and somehow even the hardest of struggles seemed better articulated, and more authentically felt in that snapshot of, well, perfection.
And we realize that these are struggles we can face. And we can overcome them, too. Sometimes it just takes a courtyard or a sunroom to realize this beautiful truth.
More often than not, it has to do with the members of that selected tribe we cull together, those special individuals who fit into the patterns of light and shadow that dance in our sunrooms and courtyards. These are the people who teach us about the wide expanse of family and what it really means. Thank you, Lizzy, for doing this with your whole heart, and for being part of our tribe.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Ten Years
On November 4, it will be ten years. Ten years since we last heard her voice, saw her newest paintings, found her sleeping covered in a white afghan on one of my parents' couches (I remember thinking that she looked like one of Peter Pan's Lost Boys as she slept, tangled in the blankets with her short pixie haircut). Ten years since that summer when I received one her many witty texts, this time saying "Love Santa stuck in chimney."
Ten years since we sat hunched together on a big cooler at one of my parents' outdoor tent parties, and I told her I would leave my husband. She was the first to know. We sat together and watched all of the laughing people, dancing and clapping and singing to the music. We watched, and she said to me "You will find happiness, Paige. You are destined to have it."
Ten years since she brought a stack of her canvases over, laid them out on the breakfast table, and asked me to describe Michelangelo's technique of layering....how did he get them to look so old? I suggested candle smoke. She loved the idea. We made plans to go to Italy in the spring -- I for my research, she to tag along and get ideas for her work.
Ten years since we saw her palette on the altar of the church - "fitting" I thought to myself at the time, "but not the right time." Not the right time. And on that same day, holding up my father on our way back to the church pew after seeing her open casket, I couldn't walk without counting "1, 2, 3" over and over again in my head. Her beautiful artist hands with perfect nails and fingers that Michelangelo would have swooned over, into which I slipped a four leaf clover. My father's shaking hands. Our shaking hearts.
Ten years since my parents opened their home and hearts to all of her many loved ones, a party in her honor in their great room the night before her funeral. She said to me once "I never got the concept of a great room until I saw your house. This room IS GREAT." She noticed the Windsor chairs my parents collected and made them beautiful collage coasters with antique prints of Windsor chairs. Helping my parents feed her friends, I placed glasses of wine onto her coasters, and silently cursed her for making them.
For my dad, ten years without a day trip companion to go antiquing for glass medicine bottles, pieces of pottery, and birds nest, which she loved. Ten years of her gentle jibes: "You're special Greg, but not that special" when he sped through a toll booth after a Bruce Springsteen concert.
For my mom, no one to sit at the table, slowly sipping a glass of her customary red wine and talking to my mom as she cleaned the kitchen...and also, given the early to bed nature of the rest of our family, no one with whom to stay up late talking.
For her friends, ten years since she asked one to borrow a shotgun to shoot mistletoe out of the trees. Ten years since she laid her head in the lap of another some hours before dying - a dear, sweet man whose tender heart belonged to her, and whose own painting, made at her urging, hangs in my living room as a reminder of how worlds become connected through tragedy.
And ten years since our last meal together. She ordered three desserts, and when asked if she wanted the cardamom ice cream, she declared with utter certainty, "Make it so." Ten years since I held her hands for the last time, hugged her thinking that I would see her over Thanksgiving. Ten years since, with my parents, we all listened to Iron and Wine in my living room and she asked me for the name of the album while she sat on the floor stroking my cat, looking with a distant curiosity at my new and unfamiliar world. A blessed world without him...and then hours later, a world so suddenly without her.
Ten years since I had a friend over for dinner, and we were laughing over soup and wine, listening to music. The windows were open; it was a crisp autum night. And my baby sister called three times before I heard my phone ring from the bedroom. Her sob like a strangle, "Paige, Cheri's gone." I stood in the threshold between my bedroom and my living room, and I remember thinking, "This is what they tell you to do during hurricanes." Brace yourself. You won't be able to stand up without support from both sides. Hold tight to the door frame when a wave of grief pushes you into a place and you need to stop it from spinning. And you then realize that the world actually hasn't moved at all...but still, it won't ever be the same.
Ten years of not being able to hear Don MacLean's "Starry, Starry Night" without thinking of her: "And with no hope left in sight/on that starry, starry night/you took your life as lovers often do/but I could have told you Vincent/this world was never meant for one/as beautiful as you."
Perhaps this is the only answer we can ever have when our hearts can't move past absence and loss. This morning, I saw the box she made for me, which she painted with peonies because she knew how much I loved them. I picked it up, and pried the lid off, breathing in linseed oil and a profound longing that has no word, no picture, nothing to give it proper weight. Oil paint doesn't ever really dry, and so the box is still sticky when it is opened, ten years later.
Tears, grief, loss - they never really "dry" either. My heart, though stronger, is not the same. It will never stop missing her. Ten years later.
Ten years since we sat hunched together on a big cooler at one of my parents' outdoor tent parties, and I told her I would leave my husband. She was the first to know. We sat together and watched all of the laughing people, dancing and clapping and singing to the music. We watched, and she said to me "You will find happiness, Paige. You are destined to have it."
Ten years since she brought a stack of her canvases over, laid them out on the breakfast table, and asked me to describe Michelangelo's technique of layering....how did he get them to look so old? I suggested candle smoke. She loved the idea. We made plans to go to Italy in the spring -- I for my research, she to tag along and get ideas for her work.
Ten years since we saw her palette on the altar of the church - "fitting" I thought to myself at the time, "but not the right time." Not the right time. And on that same day, holding up my father on our way back to the church pew after seeing her open casket, I couldn't walk without counting "1, 2, 3" over and over again in my head. Her beautiful artist hands with perfect nails and fingers that Michelangelo would have swooned over, into which I slipped a four leaf clover. My father's shaking hands. Our shaking hearts.
Ten years since my parents opened their home and hearts to all of her many loved ones, a party in her honor in their great room the night before her funeral. She said to me once "I never got the concept of a great room until I saw your house. This room IS GREAT." She noticed the Windsor chairs my parents collected and made them beautiful collage coasters with antique prints of Windsor chairs. Helping my parents feed her friends, I placed glasses of wine onto her coasters, and silently cursed her for making them.
For my dad, ten years without a day trip companion to go antiquing for glass medicine bottles, pieces of pottery, and birds nest, which she loved. Ten years of her gentle jibes: "You're special Greg, but not that special" when he sped through a toll booth after a Bruce Springsteen concert.
For my mom, no one to sit at the table, slowly sipping a glass of her customary red wine and talking to my mom as she cleaned the kitchen...and also, given the early to bed nature of the rest of our family, no one with whom to stay up late talking.
For her friends, ten years since she asked one to borrow a shotgun to shoot mistletoe out of the trees. Ten years since she laid her head in the lap of another some hours before dying - a dear, sweet man whose tender heart belonged to her, and whose own painting, made at her urging, hangs in my living room as a reminder of how worlds become connected through tragedy.
And ten years since our last meal together. She ordered three desserts, and when asked if she wanted the cardamom ice cream, she declared with utter certainty, "Make it so." Ten years since I held her hands for the last time, hugged her thinking that I would see her over Thanksgiving. Ten years since, with my parents, we all listened to Iron and Wine in my living room and she asked me for the name of the album while she sat on the floor stroking my cat, looking with a distant curiosity at my new and unfamiliar world. A blessed world without him...and then hours later, a world so suddenly without her.
Ten years since I had a friend over for dinner, and we were laughing over soup and wine, listening to music. The windows were open; it was a crisp autum night. And my baby sister called three times before I heard my phone ring from the bedroom. Her sob like a strangle, "Paige, Cheri's gone." I stood in the threshold between my bedroom and my living room, and I remember thinking, "This is what they tell you to do during hurricanes." Brace yourself. You won't be able to stand up without support from both sides. Hold tight to the door frame when a wave of grief pushes you into a place and you need to stop it from spinning. And you then realize that the world actually hasn't moved at all...but still, it won't ever be the same.
Ten years of not being able to hear Don MacLean's "Starry, Starry Night" without thinking of her: "And with no hope left in sight/on that starry, starry night/you took your life as lovers often do/but I could have told you Vincent/this world was never meant for one/as beautiful as you."
Perhaps this is the only answer we can ever have when our hearts can't move past absence and loss. This morning, I saw the box she made for me, which she painted with peonies because she knew how much I loved them. I picked it up, and pried the lid off, breathing in linseed oil and a profound longing that has no word, no picture, nothing to give it proper weight. Oil paint doesn't ever really dry, and so the box is still sticky when it is opened, ten years later.
Tears, grief, loss - they never really "dry" either. My heart, though stronger, is not the same. It will never stop missing her. Ten years later.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Retreat
I'm sure I have mentally composed about 50 gajillion blog posts, ranging in topics from my little muse of a son to unexpected losses - some violent and sudden, some expected and peaceful - all heartwrenching - to moving into a new home a few blocks away from the old piece of heaven, and transforming this new space into something similar - to teaching and being taught in my career. And so much in between. I was asked by one of my very new but very favorite people on the planet why I wasn't writing - a question my husband has repeatedly asked me, because he knows it brings me something I have been missing. I didn't really ask myself the same question with the seriousness that I should have until about an hour ago, when I was dressing my son for bed and then reading him a story as he lay with his head in my lap, one little hand on my knee, another holding the edge of the book.
Maybe - to use the ostrich metaphor - we just retreat from the things we know are so good for us when the going gets rough. For some reason, sticking one's head in the sand is somehow easier than taking the time to do what makes us happy. Go figure. Or maybe the fatigue of juggling work and home and parenting and health just prompted an unintended pause button. That then got stuck....
Leave it to my friend Shannon to stir me to action with a directive: "Write about love for me," she politely asked. Well, okay then. I think about love a whole gosh darn heck of a lot, so this should be easy. And parts of it were easy like Sunday morning. Parts of it felt a little like doing 50 sit-ups after a 2 year hiatus. Oh, there is a muscle there? Huh.
But this is the thing about a "retreat" from something: if it doesn't force you to question pieces of your life, you need to try harder. Or something. At least work until the muscle hurts a wee bit.
Yesterday I returned from an ACTUAL PHYSICAL retreat with my new batch of ninth graders. It was pretty profound on a number of levels, not the least of which was my own realization that in getting to know some of my advisees and their truly wonderful hearts, I was forgetting about the needs of my own heart. Writing about love for Shannon was an initial heads-up that "Oh hey, Paige - you like doing this! Here's a grand idea - do more of it!" And then sometimes, people come into your life and open up your heart ever wider. This happened.
Thank the stars and the crickets for those people. And thank the moons and the heavens that such people keep coming. There is no shortage of personal thresholds (a theme I'm embracing this year) if you can at least learn to recognize them. And so too, there is no shortage of blessings in the form of kindred spirits to mark those thresholds and give them their meaning.
So yesterday's retreat was a threshold in that I remembered something so painfully simple. I woke up early in the morning, took a quick shower to loosen my joints, and then sat outside to watch the sun rise. Surrounded by soybean fields and endless skies, I watched and listened to one of my very favorite things: Canadian Geese. Why anyone would want to shoot these beautiful bits of poetry out of the sky is beyond me. I mean, they mate for life! I watched them glide slowly down to land gently in a corn field, and I found myself thanking them for sharing in this morning with me. And I realized: salvation comes in all forms, but most principally, it can be found in the notion that in giving of oneself, one is receiving something in return. Holy revelations. And also: it's about time I remembered that.
Because I have a pretty constant soundtrack happening in my head, THIS was yesterday's morning anthem. It helped that the sunrise was a singularly spectacular orange. It helped that my students - those I am charged to shepherd through their first year of high school - offer a type of love and understanding to those around them that it really does feel like a salvation of sorts. Everyone is saving someone. It is how retreating and then returning to a newly established center works. It is how the heart beats in its best of moments. And to the one inspiring soul who innocently asked me why I stopped writing, thank you.
Maybe - to use the ostrich metaphor - we just retreat from the things we know are so good for us when the going gets rough. For some reason, sticking one's head in the sand is somehow easier than taking the time to do what makes us happy. Go figure. Or maybe the fatigue of juggling work and home and parenting and health just prompted an unintended pause button. That then got stuck....
Leave it to my friend Shannon to stir me to action with a directive: "Write about love for me," she politely asked. Well, okay then. I think about love a whole gosh darn heck of a lot, so this should be easy. And parts of it were easy like Sunday morning. Parts of it felt a little like doing 50 sit-ups after a 2 year hiatus. Oh, there is a muscle there? Huh.
But this is the thing about a "retreat" from something: if it doesn't force you to question pieces of your life, you need to try harder. Or something. At least work until the muscle hurts a wee bit.
Yesterday I returned from an ACTUAL PHYSICAL retreat with my new batch of ninth graders. It was pretty profound on a number of levels, not the least of which was my own realization that in getting to know some of my advisees and their truly wonderful hearts, I was forgetting about the needs of my own heart. Writing about love for Shannon was an initial heads-up that "Oh hey, Paige - you like doing this! Here's a grand idea - do more of it!" And then sometimes, people come into your life and open up your heart ever wider. This happened.
Thank the stars and the crickets for those people. And thank the moons and the heavens that such people keep coming. There is no shortage of personal thresholds (a theme I'm embracing this year) if you can at least learn to recognize them. And so too, there is no shortage of blessings in the form of kindred spirits to mark those thresholds and give them their meaning.
So yesterday's retreat was a threshold in that I remembered something so painfully simple. I woke up early in the morning, took a quick shower to loosen my joints, and then sat outside to watch the sun rise. Surrounded by soybean fields and endless skies, I watched and listened to one of my very favorite things: Canadian Geese. Why anyone would want to shoot these beautiful bits of poetry out of the sky is beyond me. I mean, they mate for life! I watched them glide slowly down to land gently in a corn field, and I found myself thanking them for sharing in this morning with me. And I realized: salvation comes in all forms, but most principally, it can be found in the notion that in giving of oneself, one is receiving something in return. Holy revelations. And also: it's about time I remembered that.
Because I have a pretty constant soundtrack happening in my head, THIS was yesterday's morning anthem. It helped that the sunrise was a singularly spectacular orange. It helped that my students - those I am charged to shepherd through their first year of high school - offer a type of love and understanding to those around them that it really does feel like a salvation of sorts. Everyone is saving someone. It is how retreating and then returning to a newly established center works. It is how the heart beats in its best of moments. And to the one inspiring soul who innocently asked me why I stopped writing, thank you.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Meditations on a pacifier
"Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, "grow, grow."
I am watching him through some newfangled, hi-tech monitor thing that my husband set up and tested on the dogs a good six months before he joined us. Twenty three minutes after putting him down for his nap, he is awake. I don't love that he regards naps with a casual disdain typically reserved for things like aspic. I do love that with each thought and impression, his entire body moves in response.
Everything really is that mind-blowing at six months old.
Yesterday, at his six month wellness visit, he wriggled happily on the examination table, bunching the paper on the table beneath him with his eager chubby baby hands, listening to the crinkle, the tear, the shhhhhhh sound it made. His need to touch everything is astounding. His feet (two of his very favorite things), my cup of tea, the Buddha bell that hangs on our doorknob, the stream of water at bath time, the ears of the dogs, my lips, my cheeks, sunglasses, hair, necklaces...all of these little tactile moments recording and transcribing some sense of order in his little world.
Today, he takes his pacifier out of his mouth. With his left hand. He does most things with his left hand, a source of pride for his southpaw mama. He studies it, turning it over and upside down, his eyes widening at each turn. He marvels that he does this. He marvels at his command of his hands in their ability to master the pacifier. He lets out several long "eeeeeeeahhhhhhhhhh" exclamations that remind me of Tibetan monk chants. He kicks his legs, and exclaims with a grunting staccato "Eh Meh Eh" that has the precision and force of Genghis Khan behind it. He makes raspberries, resumes his monk chants and then remembers the pacifier he holds in his hand. He smiles fondly at it, cooing love at a familiar piece of plastic with a joy I wish we didn't ever lose.
Several attempts, and the pacifier is back in his mouth, and his cherub lips purse and suck, smacking gladly at this accomplishment. Triumph.
Such moments of sweet victory pass quickly in the busy life of a baby. And for his sleepless, awestruck parents, there is always some moment of rediscovery and the accompanying wonder at how it was ever lost. How to pull back the curtains and let in the light. He does this now from his changing table, gleefully flapping the fabric and watching it fall again. "Embrace this moment, mama" he seems to say. "Look at the way the curtain moves, and the hippos on it dance." With his own little hands, he does this. He creates his happiness. He lets in his own light.
Sometimes he stops whatever it is that he is doing and with an awareness that belies his relatively few days, he looks at me, silently. With dark liquid eyes that reflect so much light, he stares at me intently. Such moments are profoundly moving. "I know you. I see you." "I see you!" I often respond, with want for something more fitting to say.
As parents and as people, we look backward and forward in a seesaw motion that can give one whiplash. I don't want to do this. This moment right now is pretty perfect. And as we turn a corner and greet 2012, I am thankful that 2011 has reminded me of this one truth.
Ezra. Thank you for being here, you imperfectly perfect you.
I am watching him through some newfangled, hi-tech monitor thing that my husband set up and tested on the dogs a good six months before he joined us. Twenty three minutes after putting him down for his nap, he is awake. I don't love that he regards naps with a casual disdain typically reserved for things like aspic. I do love that with each thought and impression, his entire body moves in response.
Everything really is that mind-blowing at six months old.
Yesterday, at his six month wellness visit, he wriggled happily on the examination table, bunching the paper on the table beneath him with his eager chubby baby hands, listening to the crinkle, the tear, the shhhhhhh sound it made. His need to touch everything is astounding. His feet (two of his very favorite things), my cup of tea, the Buddha bell that hangs on our doorknob, the stream of water at bath time, the ears of the dogs, my lips, my cheeks, sunglasses, hair, necklaces...all of these little tactile moments recording and transcribing some sense of order in his little world.
Today, he takes his pacifier out of his mouth. With his left hand. He does most things with his left hand, a source of pride for his southpaw mama. He studies it, turning it over and upside down, his eyes widening at each turn. He marvels that he does this. He marvels at his command of his hands in their ability to master the pacifier. He lets out several long "eeeeeeeahhhhhhhhhh" exclamations that remind me of Tibetan monk chants. He kicks his legs, and exclaims with a grunting staccato "Eh Meh Eh" that has the precision and force of Genghis Khan behind it. He makes raspberries, resumes his monk chants and then remembers the pacifier he holds in his hand. He smiles fondly at it, cooing love at a familiar piece of plastic with a joy I wish we didn't ever lose.
Several attempts, and the pacifier is back in his mouth, and his cherub lips purse and suck, smacking gladly at this accomplishment. Triumph.
Such moments of sweet victory pass quickly in the busy life of a baby. And for his sleepless, awestruck parents, there is always some moment of rediscovery and the accompanying wonder at how it was ever lost. How to pull back the curtains and let in the light. He does this now from his changing table, gleefully flapping the fabric and watching it fall again. "Embrace this moment, mama" he seems to say. "Look at the way the curtain moves, and the hippos on it dance." With his own little hands, he does this. He creates his happiness. He lets in his own light.
Sometimes he stops whatever it is that he is doing and with an awareness that belies his relatively few days, he looks at me, silently. With dark liquid eyes that reflect so much light, he stares at me intently. Such moments are profoundly moving. "I know you. I see you." "I see you!" I often respond, with want for something more fitting to say.
As parents and as people, we look backward and forward in a seesaw motion that can give one whiplash. I don't want to do this. This moment right now is pretty perfect. And as we turn a corner and greet 2012, I am thankful that 2011 has reminded me of this one truth.
Ezra. Thank you for being here, you imperfectly perfect you.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Yesterday my students and I talked about Abraham. Our seventy minute class turned into a full 90 minutes, as we processed how timely this discussion was in light of other discussions about burning Qu'rans and building sacred centers near hallowed ground. We interrogated the meaning of the word covenant and that unbroken thread of faith that acts as a cord, tying our hearts and our actions to something bigger and older than ourselves. We looked at a family tree, tracing with our fingertips the lines from Abraham to Levi and Dinah, and stopping with Moses. We spent a good bit of time unraveling the story of two sons, Isaac and Ishmael who went their separate ways and never looked back. We chewed on the meaning of sacrifice, compassion, and ownership over words and stories. We studied images of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Mosque of Abraham, contemplating the meaning of sacred space. We had a discussion about the now-frequently used phrase this time of the year: "Never Forget." As one student said, "If we haven't forgotten about all of this history we are learning, how could we forget this?"
I asked one girl who had visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem to read these words from a Muslim text recounting the story of Abraham's sacrifice to God, which she did beautifully:
She commented after reading this, "You know, I am a devout Jew. And my name is Arab. When I went to Jerusalem, we visited a famous Muslim bakery that bore our family name. And the family gave us sweets and welcomed us into their kitchen. So I guess what this means to me is that we are all family after all, whether we are descended from Isaac or Ishmael. And maybe that is why the Muslim text doesn't identify the boy as one or the other. Maybe like me, he is both."
Spiritual inquiry at its finest.
I thought of the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, set to song by Joni Mitchell with the title, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I have always loved this song and the urgent imperative behind the title phrase. So we listened to it - an impromptu exposure to two artists with whom the girls were not familiar. What a lovely way to meet both at once:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joni Mitchell
"Wow," said another of my students, "will we ever learn how to stand up straight?" I looked at the girl who is both Isaac and Ishmael. She shook her head slowly and said "Maybe it is the burden of faith that makes us slouch."
I asked one girl who had visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem to read these words from a Muslim text recounting the story of Abraham's sacrifice to God, which she did beautifully:
As the boy lies stunned on the
\the gates of heaven-so long as they believe in one God-I ask that you allow them to enter paradise."
She commented after reading this, "You know, I am a devout Jew. And my name is Arab. When I went to Jerusalem, we visited a famous Muslim bakery that bore our family name. And the family gave us sweets and welcomed us into their kitchen. So I guess what this means to me is that we are all family after all, whether we are descended from Isaac or Ishmael. And maybe that is why the Muslim text doesn't identify the boy as one or the other. Maybe like me, he is both."
Spiritual inquiry at its finest.
I thought of the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, set to song by Joni Mitchell with the title, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I have always loved this song and the urgent imperative behind the title phrase. So we listened to it - an impromptu exposure to two artists with whom the girls were not familiar. What a lovely way to meet both at once:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joni Mitchell
"Wow," said another of my students, "will we ever learn how to stand up straight?" I looked at the girl who is both Isaac and Ishmael. She shook her head slowly and said "Maybe it is the burden of faith that makes us slouch."
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
In praise of Piper
This is Piper:
Piper at rest. Which is adorable. And deceiving. And I fall for the adorable quotient every single time, in love with her sweet mug. Just to give you an idea, a photo essay of sorts detailing her beguiling cuteness:
Piper is all kinds of things, and she is nothing like our other two dogs, who basically live to be near us, and hang on our every intonation, every trip up and down the stairs, every room we enter and leave. Moxa is always in the same room as I am. Mia goes wherever there is a lap, but really, namely one lap belonging to Alex. Piper goes...somewhere...depending upon her whims, which are fleeting and have the added bonus of being completely out of left field. The drummer to which she marches has no rhyme, rhythm, or reason. And I'm not entirely convinced that there is a drummer, even. I am convinced that she spends most of her waking hours trying to relocate her Mother Ship. She isn't what we would dub as "normal" (a good thing) and we wondered for a while whether she was deaf. Nope. She's just in her own orbit, spinning happily through her carefree life with a casual regard for most things. This is as vexing as it is endearing.
Piper bounces through the house as cavalierly as a loose-limbed sailor; flopping on cushions, the rug, your face, your newly folded laundry, the coffee table even (case in point: this morning, when she did a flying leap onto the coffee table, stood in stunned stillness for a millisecond, lapped from my iced coffee, and kept cruising). She is as unaware of her surroundings as anyone could be. She soars full throttle through the cat door, only to find herself fabulously stuck in the process. I watched and laughed for a good few minutes as she barked at the dark basement on her end, her little corkscrew tail indignant and her back legs boinging up and down on mine. She skids around corners. She screeches to stops, sliding on rugs and biting at the AIR (?!) like Aladdin on an acid trip.
She is nothing if not an adventure of mishaps. And she seems to be totally okay with that fact. I respect her for it, even.
And though she frustrates me to no end, she is also one of my greatest sources of amusement.
Having a dog who licks the air as she makes her approach to licking you never gets old. And she is absolutely indiscriminate in this regard, assailing her humans, her canine compadres, the couch, the wall, the odd throw pillow, even the cat - with all the audible slopping sounds of a toddler diving into his/her first ice cream cone. Mia, ever so dainty and deliberate in her licks, is horrified when Piper assaults her out of nowhere with the force of a frog hurling its tongue out in an effort to ensnare its nearest snack.
There is absolutely nothing subtle about this dog.
If she's bored, she barks. Or jumps. Or pulls every single toy out of the toy bin.
If she's in pain, she whines like a wee banshee.
If she's frisky, she becomes a whirling dervish of chocolate brown and white, and she whirs around you until you are dizzy. This happens at least three times a day - five, if you're lucky.
She hassles the other dogs, tugging at their ears, nipping their legs, coaxing them into a game of rough house. Sometimes I feel as though I have landed in the midst of a three-way wrestling match. There are no innocent bystanders when this happens. And for three very different dogs, their "pack" is cemented. They are loving, tolerant, and considerate of one another (Piper even waits for Mia before bounding outside in the morning). It's very warm and fuzzy.
She LOVES children, and will kiss them and wag at them, and want to melt into them with no visible signs of fatigue. This can go on for hours. Children love her back. My niece calls her "Hyper" (an apt description), and carries her around like a rag doll, while Piper smiles away, limbs loose and trusting, her head cocked sideways looking up at something no one else can see (the Mother Ship perhaps?). She loves effortlessly - not at all earnestly, but with an enthusiastic blunt force that I kind of equate to a bear hug that goes on for too long.
The thing about Piper is that she loves us when she feels like it. It's completely spontaneous, her patterns are for the most part unpredictable, but the end result is always the same. She can chew my favorite sandals, demolish a thumb drive, rip holes in carpets, and leave her nose prints all over the glass door. She can take the stuffing out of each and every toy and scatter it throughout the house, she can topple trashcans and eat the tissues, and she can ignore me with all the intellectual might of a maggot (though our trainer swears she is brilliant). She can curl up to my side, nuzzle my neck, and fall sound asleep in a nanosecond. She can bat me with her paw when she wants attention, and stare at me wide-eyed and alert, ready for whatever I have to give her. She can sit for treats, and bury her nose in my hair (as she is right now). And in all of these ways, she makes her own Piper-esque mark on our hearts. Our house without her antics would seem somehow less alive. Even Moxa and Mia agree:
Piper at rest. Which is adorable. And deceiving. And I fall for the adorable quotient every single time, in love with her sweet mug. Just to give you an idea, a photo essay of sorts detailing her beguiling cuteness:
 | ||
| Piper: the early days |
Moxa deserves sainthood. Piper adores him. As we all should.
With cunning intellect, she has the unique penchant
for sticking her head
for sticking her head
through/between/under narrow spaces. It's a special talent.
She also possesses the gift of climbing into things
(i.e. a trashcan, or in this case an empty box)
(i.e. a trashcan, or in this case an empty box)
that require special talents to free herself. Special talents that she does not have.
Piper is all kinds of things, and she is nothing like our other two dogs, who basically live to be near us, and hang on our every intonation, every trip up and down the stairs, every room we enter and leave. Moxa is always in the same room as I am. Mia goes wherever there is a lap, but really, namely one lap belonging to Alex. Piper goes...somewhere...depending upon her whims, which are fleeting and have the added bonus of being completely out of left field. The drummer to which she marches has no rhyme, rhythm, or reason. And I'm not entirely convinced that there is a drummer, even. I am convinced that she spends most of her waking hours trying to relocate her Mother Ship. She isn't what we would dub as "normal" (a good thing) and we wondered for a while whether she was deaf. Nope. She's just in her own orbit, spinning happily through her carefree life with a casual regard for most things. This is as vexing as it is endearing.
Piper bounces through the house as cavalierly as a loose-limbed sailor; flopping on cushions, the rug, your face, your newly folded laundry, the coffee table even (case in point: this morning, when she did a flying leap onto the coffee table, stood in stunned stillness for a millisecond, lapped from my iced coffee, and kept cruising). She is as unaware of her surroundings as anyone could be. She soars full throttle through the cat door, only to find herself fabulously stuck in the process. I watched and laughed for a good few minutes as she barked at the dark basement on her end, her little corkscrew tail indignant and her back legs boinging up and down on mine. She skids around corners. She screeches to stops, sliding on rugs and biting at the AIR (?!) like Aladdin on an acid trip.
She is nothing if not an adventure of mishaps. And she seems to be totally okay with that fact. I respect her for it, even.
And though she frustrates me to no end, she is also one of my greatest sources of amusement.
Having a dog who licks the air as she makes her approach to licking you never gets old. And she is absolutely indiscriminate in this regard, assailing her humans, her canine compadres, the couch, the wall, the odd throw pillow, even the cat - with all the audible slopping sounds of a toddler diving into his/her first ice cream cone. Mia, ever so dainty and deliberate in her licks, is horrified when Piper assaults her out of nowhere with the force of a frog hurling its tongue out in an effort to ensnare its nearest snack.
There is absolutely nothing subtle about this dog.
If she's bored, she barks. Or jumps. Or pulls every single toy out of the toy bin.
If she's in pain, she whines like a wee banshee.
If she's frisky, she becomes a whirling dervish of chocolate brown and white, and she whirs around you until you are dizzy. This happens at least three times a day - five, if you're lucky.
She hassles the other dogs, tugging at their ears, nipping their legs, coaxing them into a game of rough house. Sometimes I feel as though I have landed in the midst of a three-way wrestling match. There are no innocent bystanders when this happens. And for three very different dogs, their "pack" is cemented. They are loving, tolerant, and considerate of one another (Piper even waits for Mia before bounding outside in the morning). It's very warm and fuzzy.
She LOVES children, and will kiss them and wag at them, and want to melt into them with no visible signs of fatigue. This can go on for hours. Children love her back. My niece calls her "Hyper" (an apt description), and carries her around like a rag doll, while Piper smiles away, limbs loose and trusting, her head cocked sideways looking up at something no one else can see (the Mother Ship perhaps?). She loves effortlessly - not at all earnestly, but with an enthusiastic blunt force that I kind of equate to a bear hug that goes on for too long.
The thing about Piper is that she loves us when she feels like it. It's completely spontaneous, her patterns are for the most part unpredictable, but the end result is always the same. She can chew my favorite sandals, demolish a thumb drive, rip holes in carpets, and leave her nose prints all over the glass door. She can take the stuffing out of each and every toy and scatter it throughout the house, she can topple trashcans and eat the tissues, and she can ignore me with all the intellectual might of a maggot (though our trainer swears she is brilliant). She can curl up to my side, nuzzle my neck, and fall sound asleep in a nanosecond. She can bat me with her paw when she wants attention, and stare at me wide-eyed and alert, ready for whatever I have to give her. She can sit for treats, and bury her nose in my hair (as she is right now). And in all of these ways, she makes her own Piper-esque mark on our hearts. Our house without her antics would seem somehow less alive. Even Moxa and Mia agree:
Sunday, August 15, 2010
You
You have a million-watt smile, and very beautiful teeth.
Your eyes are exactly the color of seaglass, and sometimes they are green. Other times, they turn blue. They almost always sparkle.
You have few outward fears.
You have the ability to speak your mind, and hold your ground.
Whenever there is a piano within a fifty foot radius, you are drawn to play it. In Vienna, a crowd of listeners cheered after you were finished. And the Viennese know a thing or two about music.
You brought me homemade apple strudel on our first date. Good move.
You don't like spicy food, or beans, or coconut milk, or ginger - all things I love. Somehow this doesn't get in our way.
You always give me the heart of your artichoke when we make them. You claim it is because you are full, but I know it is because you know how much I love them.
You always cut your juice with still or sparkling water, and you are right. It tastes better that way.
You have the ability to make people roar with laughter.
You are unafraid to try something new, or to make an adventure out of a mundane task.
You put music on for me when I cook.
You sleep very strange hours, and sometimes don't go to bed at all. As an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, I don't get this.
Come to think of it, there are a number of things about you that remain utter mysteries.
And the same is true of me, like why I open the cereal box upside down. Or why I leave cabinets open.
You love to ask questions, even when you already have the answers.
You are frustrated with the state of the basement. I don't blame you.
You love animals. Animals love you. It's a win-win situation.
You notice everything about everyone. You are very observant, sometimes annoyingly so.
You are a perfectionist. Sometimes this gets in your way; most of the time it means that our pictures are hung straight. Which they wouldn't be if I had the nail and the hammer.
You are fiercely loyal to your friends and family.
You sometimes sacrifice your time and happiness for them.
You worked your way into the heart of our ten year old nephew, who needed a male role model. And who loves you enormously.
You abhor the expression "Shut up." More people should - you're on to something with that one.
You can sit at your desk and work for, like, EVER. I can't stay still that long. I don't know how you do it.
You take the most beautiful photographs. We can be looking at the very same thing, two cameras pointing at it. My photo looks like my two year old nephew took it; yours looks like it should be on the cover of National Geographic.
You remind me to take my vitamins.
You are sensitive.
You are a much better vacuumer than I am.
Bless your soul, you are so very allergic to mosquito bites and poison ivy.
You are irreverent.
Sometimes you will walk by me, or check on me when I am sleeping and ruffle my hair. It's very soothing. You can do that more often if you would like.
You always want me to try a bite of whatever you are eating.
You had an awkward phase in high school when you wore burgundy turtlenecks. I call it your Masterpiece Theatre years.
You are patently not "one of the guys" and don't enjoy competitive sports- I like this.
You brush your teeth for exactly two minutes. This cracks me up.
You really want me to learn how to scuba dive, but I might just like to stay a snorkler.
You walk with a little spring in your step - did you know this?
You are nothing if not a realist, though you seem to enjoy my flights of fancy and day-dreaming ways. Most of the time.
You remember my students, their stories, and their struggles.
You can take apart and put a computer back together. To me, this is magic.
You chaperone high school dances with me and after the dance is over, you always order a pizza to share at midnight.
You enjoy rituals.
You would happily eat whipped cream straight. I don't think I have ever met someone who loves whipped cream as much as you do.
You always want to help people. Always.
You are particular.
You patiently follow me around in nurseries as I look at plants. For hours. And hours.
You are very left-brained but you have a right-brainedness about you too.
You switched out the fireplace so I could breathe more easily.
You put away the dishes that are too high for me to reach.
You always know where I am in a crowded room.
I know you are always thinking of me.
And I, of you.
Happy Anniversary, Alexander. I adore sharing a life with you.
Your eyes are exactly the color of seaglass, and sometimes they are green. Other times, they turn blue. They almost always sparkle.
You have few outward fears.
You have the ability to speak your mind, and hold your ground.
Whenever there is a piano within a fifty foot radius, you are drawn to play it. In Vienna, a crowd of listeners cheered after you were finished. And the Viennese know a thing or two about music.
You brought me homemade apple strudel on our first date. Good move.
You don't like spicy food, or beans, or coconut milk, or ginger - all things I love. Somehow this doesn't get in our way.
You always give me the heart of your artichoke when we make them. You claim it is because you are full, but I know it is because you know how much I love them.
You always cut your juice with still or sparkling water, and you are right. It tastes better that way.
You have the ability to make people roar with laughter.
You are unafraid to try something new, or to make an adventure out of a mundane task.
You put music on for me when I cook.
You sleep very strange hours, and sometimes don't go to bed at all. As an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, I don't get this.
Come to think of it, there are a number of things about you that remain utter mysteries.
And the same is true of me, like why I open the cereal box upside down. Or why I leave cabinets open.
You love to ask questions, even when you already have the answers.
You are frustrated with the state of the basement. I don't blame you.
You love animals. Animals love you. It's a win-win situation.
You notice everything about everyone. You are very observant, sometimes annoyingly so.
You are a perfectionist. Sometimes this gets in your way; most of the time it means that our pictures are hung straight. Which they wouldn't be if I had the nail and the hammer.
You are fiercely loyal to your friends and family.
You sometimes sacrifice your time and happiness for them.
You worked your way into the heart of our ten year old nephew, who needed a male role model. And who loves you enormously.
You abhor the expression "Shut up." More people should - you're on to something with that one.
You can sit at your desk and work for, like, EVER. I can't stay still that long. I don't know how you do it.
You take the most beautiful photographs. We can be looking at the very same thing, two cameras pointing at it. My photo looks like my two year old nephew took it; yours looks like it should be on the cover of National Geographic.
You remind me to take my vitamins.
You are sensitive.
You are a much better vacuumer than I am.
Bless your soul, you are so very allergic to mosquito bites and poison ivy.
You are irreverent.
Sometimes you will walk by me, or check on me when I am sleeping and ruffle my hair. It's very soothing. You can do that more often if you would like.
You always want me to try a bite of whatever you are eating.
You had an awkward phase in high school when you wore burgundy turtlenecks. I call it your Masterpiece Theatre years.
You are patently not "one of the guys" and don't enjoy competitive sports- I like this.
You brush your teeth for exactly two minutes. This cracks me up.
You really want me to learn how to scuba dive, but I might just like to stay a snorkler.
You walk with a little spring in your step - did you know this?
You are nothing if not a realist, though you seem to enjoy my flights of fancy and day-dreaming ways. Most of the time.
You remember my students, their stories, and their struggles.
You can take apart and put a computer back together. To me, this is magic.
You chaperone high school dances with me and after the dance is over, you always order a pizza to share at midnight.
You enjoy rituals.
You would happily eat whipped cream straight. I don't think I have ever met someone who loves whipped cream as much as you do.
You always want to help people. Always.
You are particular.
You patiently follow me around in nurseries as I look at plants. For hours. And hours.
You are very left-brained but you have a right-brainedness about you too.
You switched out the fireplace so I could breathe more easily.
You put away the dishes that are too high for me to reach.
You always know where I am in a crowded room.
I know you are always thinking of me.
And I, of you.
Happy Anniversary, Alexander. I adore sharing a life with you.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The fatted calf
"Chi troppo vuole, nulla stringe."
-He who wants too much doesn't catch anything"
-Italian proverb
For various reasons, I have an odd relationship with things and with want.
There are places in this world that feel like home to me, but I fear becoming attached to them. This can be hard.
I have a lovely little bungalow with signs of age and need for improvement, and although we have done a number of minor changes to make it more habitable, I fear wanting too much. I find myself growing overly fond of my home, and feel as though I am jinxing myself. What if something happens and I lose it? What will I do?
Truth be told, I would probably cry for a little while, look for four-leaf clovers, gather my animals around me, and eat a sandwich.
I have art on the walls, books in my shelves, clothes in my closet, a competitively impressive amount of bubble bath, and I know that if I had to, I could leave it all behind, save a few things. I know this because I have done so. And it wasn't hard. I can't even remember the treasures I summarily took leave of, and I have no desire to do so. There are things in my home - mostly memories saved: a four leaf clover, a special rock, a book from a dear friend's grandfather, a ribbon from Brazil, a stack of postcard love letters from my husband, a cherry pit, a letter from a deceased friend, my first book of poetry from my Gran that holds the memory of reading the poems with her - things that I would miss. They would fit in a medium-ish sized box.
Some have noted my detachment from things to be a curious part of my personality, given the fact that I do have a bit of a crush on shoes; others (my husband, bless his patient soul) have found it slightly frustrating in that I could probably take better care of some of the possessions I have...
...that cost money.
Which doesn't grow on trees.
Which is really the source of my frustration today.
I work hard for what I have, but that isn't what drives me to work. And what I have is more than enough. It's actually quite a lot, compared to the rest of the world. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wake up and feel lucky: a job I love, a husband I adore, animals that provide endless amusement and joie de vivre, and as I climb up on my soapbox (fair warning given), I am kind of sad that a long walk at sunset doesn't offer the same happiness to people as, say, a new lamp. How could a lamp possibly capture the same kind of light that a sunset does? This is bothering me. It is bothering me on some level deep in my belly. Despite my hard work and money earned, it makes me want to throw all of my things out of the window in protest.
(One time, when I lived in an apartment a few years ago, the neighbor living above me had the unfortunate habit of throwing things out of her window. She was on the frayed side of lunacy. She threw money out her windows, mostly quarters. Jewelry. Clothing, including lots of socks. And also tuna fish, which stuck to my window. I was bothered by her daily purgings mostly because I could hear her stomping to and from the window in the middle of the night. In clogs. It was kind of annoying and more than a little unsettling. But another part of me celebrated that she did this. Even in her frantic, delusional state, it must have felt awfully good. I collected all of her quarters -a useful commodity for doing laundry- and slipped money under her door for the exact amount. She promptly threw the money out of her living room window. I wrote her family a check for the amount when they came to move her out and into a hospital. It was never cashed. I have always felt guilty about this.)
I can't recall feeling envious of someone else for having "bigger, better, more" - the unofficial motto of the United States, where people are so used to their creature comforts that they refuse to entertain what it must be like to downsize. But now in this economy, people are.
I am all for it. Downsize away. Most of us haven't lived with food rations, with being permanently displaced from homes and families and towns. And as an historian, I think about these people who lived on a jar of Marmite and a loaf of bread that was intended to last a week. I read stories of the fun they had, because they were not focused on what they didn't have. And I read of people today being displaced and living in makeshift tents. And they don't feel sorry for themselves. They want to know where their loved ones are. That seems a legitimate wish.
All of this sort of came to some fever pitch to me today as I sit in my new office, which is GREEN. Which I love. I have a green office chair. And it is quite possibly the most comfortable thing ever. And a soft green throw for winter. And a really cool map of the world. I started thinking about how much I love my office, and then was reflecting on the color green and why I love it so. Green will always be here. If I go blind, green will be something I can still have. Its ineffable greenness will go on. As a child, I stumbled out of my bed in full sleep and leaned precariously over our balcony, asking my mother, "What is green?" After explaining to me that it was a color (apparently not a satisfactory answer for a sleepwalking four-year-old), my mother said, "It's not a thing. It's everywhere." Or some such philosophical reasoning. This apparently satisfied me and I went back to sleep. This may be why I ADORE Noam Chomsky's oft-quoted "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." Why, yes they do.
And that's pretty much the coolest thing about green, sunsets, animals, and other things - like double rainbows. Hey, I've seen a few. That YouTube guy had a reason to be totally psyched. He made meaning out of what to many, is meaningless. And I would argue that GREEN has more meaning to me than the green chair, the green vase, the green throw on my velvet couch..and so on...
The fatted calf was for homecomings, reunions, the prodigal son returneth...that sort of thing. It wasn't for every day life. Neither are double rainbows, for that matter - but for that we make no claims to own them. And if you don't want a double rainbow, you have a far better chance of catching one.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
In the Minor Key
I often wake up with a song buzzing about in my head. I don't know if this is normal or not, but most of the time, it's an awfully pleasant way to greet the day. I have started connecting it to that whole question of "What songs would you include in the soundtrack of your life?", to which I would likely respond, "Ummm, it varies on the day..and also the song that happens to appear to me for whatever reason in the morning...put them all together and you have a soundtrack. Is that an answer?" Or, to put it more simply, "That is a very difficult question."
At 5:30 this morning, I woke up humming Lou Reed's Perfect Day, a maudlin ballad with some pretty nice little piano sections and a wonderfully impassioned Lou Reed belting out "Oh, it's such a perfect day," a sentiment I can almost always get behind. Alex pointed out that it is actually "kind of a really sad song". Alex is not a morning person, and I made the premature assumption that he just wasn't quite on my "mornings with Lou" wavelength. Alas. The briefest bit of internet research yielded the popularly-held opinion that the song is about heroin. I suppose it should be somewhat obvious:
This disturbs me. On a few levels. For starters, as someone who can sort of groove with the bittersweet love ballad genre, I fully embraced the whole "you just keep me hanging on" bit...life can be about those moments, after all. But heroin? A love song about heroin? Having never even entertained the thought of experimenting with heroin, I can't really claim to know anything at all about its powers of seduction and the soporific effect that it apparently induces in musicians, thus rendering them lovesick. Truly I only know what I witness on an all-too-frequent basis in the streets of Baltimore (if you don't live in Baltimore, watch The Wire - it will give you some insight into heroin use and its damaging dream-state). It wouldn't have even occurred to me, honestly. Which in itself is ridiculous, given the number of songs dedicated to "the altered state." And I consider myself someone who knows a fair bit about music.
Pregnant pause.
I happen to have two other songs (among others) that would join the ranks of the hypothetical Paige soundtrack. One is a poignant reminder of a particularly low point in my life and the sort of breathless effort it took for me to clear a couple of Everest-sized hurdles: Running to Stand Still. Which was kind of what my life felt like then. I once listened to this song no less than ten times on repeat. That bit:
"You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice"
Well, it was my anthem. In my naivete, the "needle chill" was my own personal reference to the many injections, shots, blood draws etc...I underwent when I was very sick. For all of my love of nuance and the layers of the onion and all of that hooey, I can be remarkably literal. Apparently.
The song is about heroin.
The second is a song that Alex often hums: Golden Brown. This particular version is a cover by Cult With No Name; it was originally written and performed by the Stranglers. I falsely assumed that it was a love song and thought that it was sweet that Alex so frequently sings this (as an accomplished pianist, he tends to like songs foregrounding the piano), because I guess you could sort of call my hair that color...in the summer...after I've been in the sun for a while. Okay, it's a stretch. But it is a pretty song and the piano gets me every time.
And it too is about heroin.
I have to ruefully chuckle at this, and find myself again bemused by my all-too-frequently naive impression of things in general. And though I am somewhat dismayed that my songs of love and human might and triumph actually share a slightly different story, I suppose we choose our soundtracks for what each song offers each of us...which varies, even in our disillusionment. Alex offered the logical explanation that I tend to prefer songs in the minor key, which are evocative of a certain "mood". That could be the case. Woody Guthrie's lovely conclusion to this (as performed by Billy Bragg and Natalie Merchant) explains it better than I - and thankfully, without any references to heroin. I hope.
Way Over Yonder In the Minor Key
written by this guy, who knew what was up. The smile says it all:
At 5:30 this morning, I woke up humming Lou Reed's Perfect Day, a maudlin ballad with some pretty nice little piano sections and a wonderfully impassioned Lou Reed belting out "Oh, it's such a perfect day," a sentiment I can almost always get behind. Alex pointed out that it is actually "kind of a really sad song". Alex is not a morning person, and I made the premature assumption that he just wasn't quite on my "mornings with Lou" wavelength. Alas. The briefest bit of internet research yielded the popularly-held opinion that the song is about heroin. I suppose it should be somewhat obvious:
This disturbs me. On a few levels. For starters, as someone who can sort of groove with the bittersweet love ballad genre, I fully embraced the whole "you just keep me hanging on" bit...life can be about those moments, after all. But heroin? A love song about heroin? Having never even entertained the thought of experimenting with heroin, I can't really claim to know anything at all about its powers of seduction and the soporific effect that it apparently induces in musicians, thus rendering them lovesick. Truly I only know what I witness on an all-too-frequent basis in the streets of Baltimore (if you don't live in Baltimore, watch The Wire - it will give you some insight into heroin use and its damaging dream-state). It wouldn't have even occurred to me, honestly. Which in itself is ridiculous, given the number of songs dedicated to "the altered state." And I consider myself someone who knows a fair bit about music.
Pregnant pause.
I happen to have two other songs (among others) that would join the ranks of the hypothetical Paige soundtrack. One is a poignant reminder of a particularly low point in my life and the sort of breathless effort it took for me to clear a couple of Everest-sized hurdles: Running to Stand Still. Which was kind of what my life felt like then. I once listened to this song no less than ten times on repeat. That bit:
"You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice"
Well, it was my anthem. In my naivete, the "needle chill" was my own personal reference to the many injections, shots, blood draws etc...I underwent when I was very sick. For all of my love of nuance and the layers of the onion and all of that hooey, I can be remarkably literal. Apparently.
The song is about heroin.
The second is a song that Alex often hums: Golden Brown. This particular version is a cover by Cult With No Name; it was originally written and performed by the Stranglers. I falsely assumed that it was a love song and thought that it was sweet that Alex so frequently sings this (as an accomplished pianist, he tends to like songs foregrounding the piano), because I guess you could sort of call my hair that color...in the summer...after I've been in the sun for a while. Okay, it's a stretch. But it is a pretty song and the piano gets me every time.
And it too is about heroin.
I have to ruefully chuckle at this, and find myself again bemused by my all-too-frequently naive impression of things in general. And though I am somewhat dismayed that my songs of love and human might and triumph actually share a slightly different story, I suppose we choose our soundtracks for what each song offers each of us...which varies, even in our disillusionment. Alex offered the logical explanation that I tend to prefer songs in the minor key, which are evocative of a certain "mood". That could be the case. Woody Guthrie's lovely conclusion to this (as performed by Billy Bragg and Natalie Merchant) explains it better than I - and thankfully, without any references to heroin. I hope.
Way Over Yonder In the Minor Key
written by this guy, who knew what was up. The smile says it all:
Monday, July 26, 2010
Catch
"The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered...Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in."
It is not humid in Baltimore today. Which is no small miracle - and this from someone who loves heat most of the time. This morning, I saw goldfinches dancing in my pond (they have their own permanent gold unitards, lucky ones). The air feels more like Maine air. And it's clear and blue. A gorgeous day. My husband just sent me this photo, with the message: "Look outside. I love you." It kind of sums things up nicely:
I live in a neighborhood that embraces summer with an optimism that is as startling as it is familiar to me in some weird way. It is sort of unreal in its genuine civility and warmth. When we moved here, we were greeted with homemade cookies, preserves, muffins, and so many heartfelt welcomes. My next door neighbors, whom I adore and whose son I wish I could call my own, just stopped over and invited me to spend his second birthday with them on Wednesday at the National Aquarium. I'm their plus one guest. This little angel boy is quite surely the subject of an entry all his own; suffice to say that we sat on my porch swing this evening as he battled a newly diagnosed bout with the terrible twos and I, my own long and difficult day when I wished I could have used the terrible twos as an excuse for a wee temper tantrum on the floor. And he rested his darling cherub hand on my knee and the world felt alright.
That's the thing about my neighborhood - even though the world isn't alright, I live in this little slice of I don't know - Eden? - where people say hello from their bungalow stoops and remind my heart to quiet a moment and be mindful of what a home really is. Neighbors stop and chat and wave at joggers. My new friend Beth (I really like Beth) waves at me as she drives by. Lucas, the recent high school graduate, asks me about my garden and how my grass is growing. He falls asleep at night listening to our waterfall through his open window. That makes me enormously happy. The shy, sweet girl down the street walks her beloved rescue dog while two boys who live a few houses in the opposite direction race by on their bikes, wearing Batman and cowboy Halloween costumes. Awesome. The boy with the mop of wildly curly hair swings from a tree branch, and part of me wants to stand under him to catch him if he falls. But that child is nothing if not indestructible. He has perfected the art of swinging, and running barefoot --and jumping on the pogo stick, which he continued to do one evening with such abandon that he didn't immediately notice the blood pouring out of a spectacularly scraped big toe after a spill. Ten minutes with some hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin and a Band-Aid, and he was back outside. Tonight, I did a double take. He must have grown a foot since I saw him at the (wait for it....) Root Beer Float Social that the neighborhood children had at the end of the school year. When he perfected his pogo stick skills. And when he seemed so much younger.
Behind our house, there are two houses with families, each of which have three little girls. It is a constant slumber party, and the girls walk to and from the backyards in their bathing suits, their nightgowns, their sundresses. They call to my dogs from the top of their fort and they giggle and chase one another and swing in their swings and sing songs. And the parents sit on the porch, drinking a beer, and sometimes admonishing whichever wayward child (not necessarily their own) has hurt another child's feelings. Which you know, with six girls, is easy to do...
And then as I was closing my blinds this evening, I looked out to see a father teaching his son how to catch a ball. I thought of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I thought of how much I wished, at various points in my life having read and reread the book over a series of New York and then Baltimore summers, I lived in such a place, troubled though it was in ways only Bradbury can put into words. And now I do. I also thought of Douglas Spaulding (the young boy in the novel), who declares that his summer will be a time of firsts: first root beer float, first run through the grass barefoot, first firefly caught, and so on...these firsts and lasts that define Green Town as a place where Nature and technology collide, sometimes in miraculous ways and sometimes in ways that point to evil, to a loss of something pure, to overlooking happiness when it sits right in front of you. We are lucky in this neighborhood that at this juncture, living as we do in Baltimore of all places, that a child can still have this, and that selfishly, I can witness it:
Sort of like catch.
It is not humid in Baltimore today. Which is no small miracle - and this from someone who loves heat most of the time. This morning, I saw goldfinches dancing in my pond (they have their own permanent gold unitards, lucky ones). The air feels more like Maine air. And it's clear and blue. A gorgeous day. My husband just sent me this photo, with the message: "Look outside. I love you." It kind of sums things up nicely:
I live in a neighborhood that embraces summer with an optimism that is as startling as it is familiar to me in some weird way. It is sort of unreal in its genuine civility and warmth. When we moved here, we were greeted with homemade cookies, preserves, muffins, and so many heartfelt welcomes. My next door neighbors, whom I adore and whose son I wish I could call my own, just stopped over and invited me to spend his second birthday with them on Wednesday at the National Aquarium. I'm their plus one guest. This little angel boy is quite surely the subject of an entry all his own; suffice to say that we sat on my porch swing this evening as he battled a newly diagnosed bout with the terrible twos and I, my own long and difficult day when I wished I could have used the terrible twos as an excuse for a wee temper tantrum on the floor. And he rested his darling cherub hand on my knee and the world felt alright.
That's the thing about my neighborhood - even though the world isn't alright, I live in this little slice of I don't know - Eden? - where people say hello from their bungalow stoops and remind my heart to quiet a moment and be mindful of what a home really is. Neighbors stop and chat and wave at joggers. My new friend Beth (I really like Beth) waves at me as she drives by. Lucas, the recent high school graduate, asks me about my garden and how my grass is growing. He falls asleep at night listening to our waterfall through his open window. That makes me enormously happy. The shy, sweet girl down the street walks her beloved rescue dog while two boys who live a few houses in the opposite direction race by on their bikes, wearing Batman and cowboy Halloween costumes. Awesome. The boy with the mop of wildly curly hair swings from a tree branch, and part of me wants to stand under him to catch him if he falls. But that child is nothing if not indestructible. He has perfected the art of swinging, and running barefoot --and jumping on the pogo stick, which he continued to do one evening with such abandon that he didn't immediately notice the blood pouring out of a spectacularly scraped big toe after a spill. Ten minutes with some hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin and a Band-Aid, and he was back outside. Tonight, I did a double take. He must have grown a foot since I saw him at the (wait for it....) Root Beer Float Social that the neighborhood children had at the end of the school year. When he perfected his pogo stick skills. And when he seemed so much younger.
Behind our house, there are two houses with families, each of which have three little girls. It is a constant slumber party, and the girls walk to and from the backyards in their bathing suits, their nightgowns, their sundresses. They call to my dogs from the top of their fort and they giggle and chase one another and swing in their swings and sing songs. And the parents sit on the porch, drinking a beer, and sometimes admonishing whichever wayward child (not necessarily their own) has hurt another child's feelings. Which you know, with six girls, is easy to do...
And then as I was closing my blinds this evening, I looked out to see a father teaching his son how to catch a ball. I thought of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I thought of how much I wished, at various points in my life having read and reread the book over a series of New York and then Baltimore summers, I lived in such a place, troubled though it was in ways only Bradbury can put into words. And now I do. I also thought of Douglas Spaulding (the young boy in the novel), who declares that his summer will be a time of firsts: first root beer float, first run through the grass barefoot, first firefly caught, and so on...these firsts and lasts that define Green Town as a place where Nature and technology collide, sometimes in miraculous ways and sometimes in ways that point to evil, to a loss of something pure, to overlooking happiness when it sits right in front of you. We are lucky in this neighborhood that at this juncture, living as we do in Baltimore of all places, that a child can still have this, and that selfishly, I can witness it:
"I’m ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really."
Sort of like catch.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Everyone needs their version of a gold unitard
On Sunday, after perspiring mightily on a long walk to midtown Baltimore, I had a moment. It was one of those back-of-the-neck tingling, teeter-on-the-edge-of-my-seat, exclaiming "Oh-my-heavens" under my breath repeatedly moments. I think I may have announced "I'm having a moment" to my dear friend Shannon, who walked with me from Hampden to the Meyerhoff to watch Graham II perform. For free. In an air conditioned auditorium.
I LOVE attending modern dance performances. LOVE them. Addiction in this case is not too strong a word. I love bearing witness to the remarkable poetry that choreography holds, releases, and explodes, using music, sets, costumes, and of course, PEOPLE. The human body is an eloquent thing, after all. I would venture to say that I feel more alive when I watch a dancer on stage than I do in any other performance setting. Basketball holds a similar appeal, and there is a definite balletic grace in the agility and ragged movements that fly across a basketball court -all of which seem to defy logic. Like dance.
There is something about dance, especially modern dance, that really does make me swoon and feel slightly dizzy. In a good way. At Sarah Lawrence (where I went for undergraduate studies), I was surrounded by dancers and by a legacy of modern dance that I knew even at the time was really something extraordinary. Viola Farber, a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, was the grand dame and life-force of the Sarah Lawrence dance department, and I came to know her through my friends and one of my professors, her own dear friend. I loved Viola. She walked with the aid of a cane, and had a shorn crew cut that I often found myself wanting to touch. I can still call to memory her sing-song voice, the staccato of which was uncannily matched by her movements on stage. I saw her perform once, and it shook me to my core. I think I cried. And when she passed away, not long after I graduated, I wept bitterly.
Viola's students (many of whom were my friends) could do things with their bodies that I can not fathom. Is it odd that I remember so many of their choreographed pieces? I think not. A number of them are dancers today. One of my dearest friends, Angeline, came to Sarah Lawrence all the way from Hawaii. She knew how to hula, which basically granted her star status in my book. And when I saw her dance, I understood why my best friend had fallen so madly in love with her. She choreographed pieces that caused me to leap to my feet in admiration (much to Gaby's embarrassment). I don't think I missed one dance performance in my four years at Sarah Lawrence, and I can still remember costumes, movements, who danced in certain pieces, and a particularly beautiful piece that had me sobbing buckets. It was choreographed to this song, and I still get chills when I hear it (especially the end)*:
*I had forgotten Sting had a long hair phase. Huh. And also - the SLC choreographers blew his video out of the water.
When I lived in New York, I saw as much dance as I possibly could: Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Elizabeth Streb...it is insanely fun to go to dance performances in New York, a city where dance happens on subways, streets, in parks, and on sidewalks. There is a spontaneity in New York that is as infectious as its rhythmic and finely measured choreography - the perfect place for dancers and aficcionados of its art. And the feeling of walking into a performance space grasping a ticket, knowing that the next hour or two will be spent witnessing a series of small miracles...well. It rivals only the high one leaves with after the performance has ended, and one is brought back down to earth again, wanting a gold unitard.
Shannon loves dance as much as I do. She comes to my student dance performances with me, and we gush over the incredible talent so many of my students possess. Seriously. One of my former students was recently told in her first year of college that she was "too good" for the dance department and they recommended that she transfer to a university that would adequately challenge her. Watching her dance is akin to experiencing some sort of angry angel, who has the singular gift of transforming that raw venom into a divine elixir. I could watch her dance for the rest of my life and never tire of it. And when I first saw one of her choreographed pieces, I felt like a student at Sarah Lawrence again, memorizing the costumes, the movements, who occupied stage left, whose leg could kick higher in the air, and so on.. When Shannon first saw my former-especially-insanely-talented student dance, she GOT IT too and I remember leaving the auditorium with her, both of us giddy. Both of us over-the-moon, ridiculously happy.
So it makes perfect sense that we would go to see Graham II together. Sunday was the first time I had the gift of seeing any of Martha Graham's companies perform a full show. Which is kind of funny, given that she is the irrefutable mother of modern dance. I mean, look at her and tell me that you don't feel every single emotion in the spectrum when you study this image:
If that isn't some sort of heaven, I don't know what is. How can a face be so still while the body does THAT?? How does that hand say so much?
Graham II is a company of young dancers, and on Sunday, they performed a small number of Martha Graham's pieces, choreographed during World War II, the Cold War, and so on...in the midst of all that ugliness, people had THIS. Had I been alive, I would have clung to these choreographies like rosary beads. One of her most famous pieces (a bit of which was performed on Sunday), Appalachian Spring, had a score of Aaron Copland and a set by Isamu Noguchi. Collaboration at its finest.
My favorite piece was the final performance: a section from Acts of Light, choreographed in 1981. It has to be one of the most technically difficult performances I have ever seen, with dozens of Graham's infamous contractions unleashed in double-time. I think I held my breath through most of it. At the end of the performance, the dancers looked like I did when I walked in off the street, "glowing" profusely (as my grandmother taught me was the proper word for perspiring). I have seen another part of Acts of Light, and it dawned on me, watching the dancers wearing nothing but these amazing gold unitards, that this piece is really kind of a painful thing. All of these contractions - so eerily beautiful, are like bee stings, and like a bee sting, they make one feel more alive than before. Which is kind of the point of most things, I think.
And so Acts of Light rivals my favorite Carracci in its celebration of the human form, and of the complicated dance that life and death engage in so arduously. "There are daily small deaths," Martha Graham once noted. A realist thick and through, she was also able to marvel in the magic that dance offers us, while regarding dance as something that we all must do, and CAN do to keep the human spirit intact, vibrating, alive. Donning the gold unitard (which is something I desperately covet now) is really a form of personal truth, and we need these truths to find our own planets. It is a gift to throw one's arms in the air and make magic.
"I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does."
-Martha Graham
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