The days are not good or bad,
as I am so wont to determine.
The calm hour of reading.
The silly lisping in the office.
The steamy silence. The red spatula.
The quick update in the hall.
The shine of the floor. The sweaty tortilla.
The cold sheets.  The soft blue shirt.
The soft blue eyes. The perfect crock. 
The long aisle to housewares.
The drive through Euclid Creek Park. 
Why do I label my life,
when all that is here is simply here,
so abundantly giving and giving?

The wonder wall

What the kindergarteners posted so far:
Who was the first American?
(Boy, how do answer that to a five year old?)
Was Zeus real?
I wonder if my guinea pig will talk.

My wonders so small and immediate:
Will the ice maker break on my the refrigerator
(as it is said to do sometimes)?
Will I have enough drawer space?
Will my T-Fal pots make me get Alzheimer's?
I had no idea eating asparagus could do that to my urine.
Are my wrinkles getting deeper and more pronounced every morning?
Or did I just sleep in a really weird position? 
Will my back pain ever go away?
Did McDonald's really have to be built so close to my house?
Why don't I want to follow the Ignatian lenten retreat?
Did Frank, from Habitat for Humanity, get my call? 
When you google search my name now,
will "A Seasons of Welcome" come up?
If so, what will happen to me?  Will it be good or bad?

Then larger, but still proximitous to me:
What did I forget to do or say today?
Did the kids have fun?
Did I work hard enough to get them to do their best?
Why did I have to throw in that last,
slightly snarky comment, in today's morning meeting?
Laughing is good; why don't I go to the office more regularly to talk with my friends?
If I keep eating this way, what will happen? 

Then larger and, while still connected to me, beyond me too:
If I stay right here, in this small lovely house for the rest of my life,
will I have lived enough?
If we fail at IB, will it be my fault?
If I go to Moab, will I fit in?
Do I fit in? Do I need to fit in? Does anyone fit in?
I need to be outside.  Why am I better outside?
Why have I spent so much time inside?
(And I mean that literally and metaphorically)

Then right back to small and skin deep:
Will the skunks get into my garbage?
Should I go get and bring it back inside for the night?
What about that toaster oven; why'd I leave it at school?

Funny how we zoom in and out on our lives.  Asking things of little last relevance, then profound importance.  Then we dive back fast, into the shallow water.

At school, we have been listing questions in all of our classrooms.  And while asking is good, the IB consultant pointed out -- duh -- that questions need answers.  That inquiry must be coupled with attainment of knowledge.  No wonder I have just been slapping post-it notes on my chalkboard.  That's what I do in real life too.  Ask, ask, ask, without slowing down to discern what needs to be steeped in my head for while, weighed by my heart.  If I really laid down with my questions, curled around them through the night, how might my life change?   

Intoxicating

There was a time -- children of this era will never know it -- when men pumped gas for you.  I remember sitting in the backseat of the station wagon hearing the fuel flow into the gas tank while I watched the uniform-shirted man wet the windshield, wipe the windshield, then clear the rubber blade with one of those thick sky blue paper towels .  Then click, the tank was full, the credit card number was etched into the carbon paper, my mother laughed her flirtatious laugh and we were off.

I also remember when we, mere lay people, were allowed to able to pump the petrol.  It seemed somehow dangerous.  If it were not, why had the world waited so long for us to be able to do it?  Until I was old enough, my father would get out and stand at the rear of the car, smoking his cigarette while making small talk with the men who used to do what he was doing now.

Then, somehow, I was finally of age allowed to pump the gas.  I remember standing there smelling the gas, hoping some would spill on my hands.  Watching the wavy emissions - rainbow fumes floating up all around me.  I knew I was not supposed to love the smell as much as I did, but it was a drug to me.  I always scurried out of the car so that I could be beat my brother to the task.  I also knew that I was oddly attached to the smell of just-lit matches, though I was not brave enough to light them.  The wooden smell of bourbon.  My throat when it had bloomed into a winter's infection.  Chlorine on skin.  Chlorine in hair.  Permanent markers.  Rubber cement.  Turpentine. Modeling glue.  I felt strangely guilty about all of this.  Wasn't it normal for a girl to love the smell of shampoo, flowers, Bonnie Bell perfume, watermelon lip gloss? I loved the smell of boys things. Of dangerous things.

Today when I came home, I was swooning.  My house was saturated with the smell of stain.  New floor stain.  If my new kitchen floor were a person I would have laid down on it and pressed my nose in its neck. I would have wrapped my arms around its belly and laid there all night, dozing off by the drunk love of it.  Heady.  Keeled over.  Buckled by the smell.

The veil is thin

This is when it is best.
The ankle of your heart is exposed.
So is the belly of your knee.
Your voice is soggy
grass after a long winter.
Your words salt and pepper,
giving taste to the untested.
It is good to meet someone
at a bend in the road, 
to nod, then simply stand
there face to face.

Tomrrow I will pray for energy (take 2)

When Tavish walked into the kitchen, he immediately said, "Watch out, all of this electricity can be very dangerous."  I think he even held his hand back to keep his little sister from getting too close.


But I think the proximity to that which is dangerous appeals to me somehow.  Sure, I'm glad that in a couple weeks, my kitchen will be finished, but I also have liked seeing it naked, plastered over, revamped.  There are circuits where there once were none.


Wouldn't that be the best thing that could happen to us?  To me?  Exposed wire.  A little jingle in the fingertips.  I didn't expect fifty to feel like it does; I am somehow younger than I imagined.  But I am also coated over.  Tiled over.  Caulked up.  Grounded, not in a good way. 


I have become a little distant from my life and that maybe even more dangerous than a live circuit within a quick reach.


Hmmm, even when I was writing this last night, it did not feel right.  Like I had a moment with Tavish, a cool picture of an outlet, then I was trying to force a story.  My fingers did not want to type.  They would rest, in rebellion, on my desk, then reluctantly and poorly strike the letters.  So many write/deletes.  So many spelling errors.

When I awakened today, I was even more aware of the fact that I was trying to force an OLD story onto an image. No wonder my fingers did not want to type.  They knew I was telling a lie. 

That must happen all of the time. Me forcing old stories onto my very alive and living life.

All I really should have written was this:

When Tavish walked into the kitchen, he immediately said, "Watch out, all of this electricity can be very dangerous."  Then he held his hand back to keep his little sister from getting too close.  She nodded and stepped back, at 4, believing his love would always save her.

That's it.  That's the moment.  That's the thing I saw and it had nothing to do with me.

From now on, and I feel like I should raise my right hand old school Girl Scout style,  I pledge to see the story and tell the story.  Nothing more. Nothing less.  No false tendrils to me.  No attachment to who I used to believe I was.  Or who I limit myself being.

I see a picture

Some people stretch beyond words.  The lexicon seems inadequate, the semantics thin.  I use words to create similes which cause me to get farther and farther from the truth.  I want to say it in metaphor, even then knowing I have scraped my knees while falling short.  You, I would say, are lake water.  You, an old oak.  You, dust in the sunshine.  You, wrinkles in the sand. You, a deer's steady eyes.  You, river silt through my fingers.  How do I throw words at something as remarkable as you?  Or you?  And you, too, the one I know is reading this?

Painting the back of the door

It is funny how the sight of something can link me instantly to an event, then another and another until it is nine years ago and I am starring down some memory I cannot seem to forget.  Tonight I decided to slap a coat of paint on the back of my kitchen door -- the side that faces the basement.  Chris, the superman of all things remodeling, had already spent hours sanding priming and double coating the side that faces the kitchen.

But tonight I realized that when someone opened the door, it would like they had been plunged down a rabbit hole back into the seventies.  Beige trim.  Who ever thought of using mud beige trim?

I wanted my backside to look as good as my front side (but isn't that always the case with every woman).  So, I yanked on my paint clothes and got to work.  I did not sand, did not prime, I just grabbed the paint, a brush and began.

That's when I saw it, the black stain of the pulley ropes at the peak of the door.  The pulley ropes that draped over the kitchen door.  The pulley ropes where I sat and pulled twice a day for 365 straight days trying to make my shoulder more flexible after the terrible humerus break.  The pulley rope stain made me think of Jennie, the way she healed me, one exercise after another.  Then birds, because that's what the gears sounded like every morning.  Then Carrie, who said they sounded like birds.  Then Jennie again, because thinking of Carrie makes my heart hard.  Then Jennie on the day the splint was taken off.  Her wavy hair, her long fingers.  Her eyes, so dark and knowing.  Then that day when she was stretching my arm on the table and she said she didn't think Jesus was ever married.  That she did not like the thought of Jesus having and using a penis.  Then, of course, I thought of penises. (That was just a passing thought).

I looked back at the black rope stains thinking that it was time to paint over them.  And while I was at it,  I verified that it had been good to paint over my door frame paintings as well.  And it was good to change out the blue lamp in the breakfast nook.  Get ride of the bisque colored fridge.  Have a new place for my food.  My art.  The things that feed me.

I am slow to change.  I am slow to welcome newness in my steady life.  But, in these last few weeks, it has become so clear to me that it's okay to let it go.  Let it all go.  The injuries, the sentimental writing, the thoughts about making a fritatta with Carrie, the chatting over the island.  It's okay to find a new place for the garbage can.  It's okay to stack the dishes in a different way.  It's okay to forget the black stain.  The pulleys.  The pain of being broken.  The pain of being crushed in two. It's okay to repaint my life.  Whether I do it carefully and tenderly like Chris, or in a fit of implusivity like me.  It's okay to open the door and see white.  It's okay to close a door and see white.  It is okay to begin again, all white.  All white, again.

Ash Wednesday

I want to be ballsy like the great prophet, Isaiah.  I want to be free from my doubting smallness, the part of me that is so very human.  I want to be grand, universal, someone not afraid to push myself and everyone else to the goodness we refuse to pick up.

I want to say, like Isaiah said, forget about the fasting of food, drink.  God does not care about your occasional curse word.  That is all insignificant shit anyway.   Rid yourself, not of these petty habits, but of the larger things that hold you back. Fast from selfishness.  From doubt.  From self-loathing.  Fast from making yourself smaller than you are, less powerful than you could be.  Fast from taking it easy.  From blending in.  From being nonchalant about the gifts you have been given.  Starve yourself of fear.  Eat no more from the plate of reigning in, do not take one more bite of containing yourself.  Throw away every morsel of niggling anxiety.

Give up, quit, renounce, surrender, pass up, refuse, refrain from, take away every single thing that keeps you from being yourself.  Try that for Lent.  Try doing that to serve your God.

I went back to say thank you

All you need to know is this: There was a boy who ran away.  There was a worker where the boy ran.  There was a woman, yes, she is me, who happened to be at the place where the worker was, where the boy ran.  The boy knew the woman. The woman knew the boy.  The boy told the worker and the woman some truth.  Dark dusk truth.  Mossy furtive truth.  Truth with sharp teeth.

The man was there, the boy was there, the woman was there and eventually other people came too: a mother, a father, a police officer in a tight navy uniform.

And there was someone else there too.  Only this person does not have a name.  This person is not even a person.  It is an it, the runic It.  The something that splices one person to another.  That spoons one life into the next.  That which reveals the seeds.  The fiber.  The soft coming shadow of spring.

You may call it fate.  You may call it synchronicity.  Kismet.  I call it God, all that is good and gracious. 

There was a boy.  A man.  A woman.  A truth with sharp teeth.  And there was God, too.  Nodding.  Knowing.  Seeing the gentle unrolling when troubled turns to tender.  When what was unbearable is finally borne.

Great Blue Herons

Sixty, maybe seventy of them perched in their nests.  Paired.  Single.  Waiting.  One might leave, make a wide loop out from the nest and then back to the tree, sort of like a bomber plane circling a target.  So expansive that the turning radius was liberally loose. Slow. 

No, that's not right. There is nothing mechanical about them at all. Their dinosaur elbows, their mile-long necks.  The fat cocoon of a body. Their needle beaks.

It was like watching something extinct among us.  Something ancient and orphic.  I was sure one might fly over then lean down and whisper, "Yes, it begins now." Or that one might float near the divide between the wet march and the road and toss down a picture of my great, great grandmother from Germany.  Like they knew everything from all time and could sense how spindly and unsteady we are without our wings.

We read that the males go out to retrieve sticks as part of the mating ritual.  Picture it. The heron loping through the sky, the stick whiskered out of its beak, rising to the branch, jutting its feet out, retracting its head, touched down.  Him holding out the stick to her.  A gesture.  A genuflection.  The bending salaam of love.