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
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