Garden of Impossible

I spend a lot of time designing

a garden of impossible in my head. 

It’s filled with “What If” annuals and “If Only” perennials.  

The ground is not particularly well established,

layers and layers of cheap soil, but it is well-tilled.

It’s hard to distinguish a seeded plant

from a weed, so I let it all grow.

One section, on the western side,

bred a new species of “If I Had” blossoms. 

Years ago it overtook the plot, but now I prune

the vinery.  I bundle the creeper

into a big brown lawn bag,

making sure it never touches my heart.

Regret is a lot like poison ivy,

but it lasts for years, blistering the valves shut.

The eastern edge of the garden

is a wild collection of dreaming.

Skinny tall plants with big budding heads amidst

a flooding of ground cover.  “When I” is particularly

fertile this year; it grows through drought seasons.

 “If I Meet Her” keeps seeding and reseeding itself.

This May, there were twice as many shoots as last.

Right in the middle of this common greenery

is the collision of truth.  “I Am” blossoms

do not move their heads like sunflowers seeking light,

but swivel side to side every day, pinched between

“What Was” and “What Will Be.” Sometimes,

they lock their gaze on the blue sky and

do not twist at all. Even though the hose rarely finds that part

of my garden, they have the most persistent need to grow.  

They’re the blooms I cut and take inside.

Bursts of fuschia and lime green by my bedside,

and near the kitchen sink. Right now, I am sticking my nose

into the “Just Me” petals.  They smell like rain and sunshine.

If I am

If I am mostly made up of water, then let it be the water of Amelia Island and a steamy hot bath. Let me be gallons of chlorinated water from Mt. Lebanon High School Pool and rainbows of water streaming from the good fountain on the second floor of Fernway School.  Let it be cold water from a yellow Igloo jug during the fifth inning of a tied softball game.  Something rippling from the Chagrin River.   The coffee that has sat between me and my friends at the Stone Oven.  Or the metallic tasting water from the tennis center, especially after that match I played with Erin Pesko when I was sixteen.

If I am made up of connective tissue, then let it be the bungy cord from the luggage rack of the green wood paneled 1975 Ford station wagon.   Let it be the rope and the tape that Tavish wraps around every nook and cranny of his house as he concocted paths to secret treasures.  Let me be made up of the vines that wend their way around the new oaks at River’s Edge.

If I am made of apatite and bones, then let it be straight from the marrow of my ruptured humerus.  Let me be reminded forever and again of the growth inherent in hurt and healing. it be the hollow bone of the heron that swooped down on Nikki and me on the banks of the Cuyahoga River.  Let me be made of the steel rafters of Three Rivers Stadium and a dropped anchor of Chub Cay in the Bahamas.

If I am made of carbohydrates and sugar, then load me up with candy from Kovall’s.  Graeter’s ice cream circa 1983.  And my mother’s sour cream coffee cake served warm from the oven the morning of her annual Christmas brunch.

If I am made of DNA, then let it arch all the way back to the Isle of Silt, the hefty German Reinholds. And give me a strong dose of the ministering Cowans.  I’ll take my dad’s square fingernails and his love of music.  I will give thanks for my mother’s foresty hairline and her artistic taste. I will carry the eggs still in me and release all of the eggs come and gone.   But, honestly, I grieve them, the children I will never mother.

If I am made up of free radicals, then let it be so.  Let me be more free and more radical. 

If I am made of gases, please let it be the air of Abiuqui or the woods behind Dennison Hall at Miami University.  I also will take liters and liters from the swirling drives in the Rabbit Convertible, especially the air east, far out Shaker Blvd. And the air in the words spoken and heard from the pulpit at Forest Hill Church.

If I am made up of small particles of other things too, like cofactors and ions, let them be made of beach glass, especially red and bright aqua blue.  And the pea gravel from Middle Path at Kenyon College.  Let them be the first peak at the baby toes of my nieces and nephew.  Let there be stubby chewed pencils, especially those used during Monday poetry play times, and wadded up bubble gum wrappers left on my front porch.

Everyone knows happiness

Everyone knows happiness. But we forget it sometimes.
We lose it underneath the driver's seat with a random quarter,
a pen cap, and an acorn from November, 2010.
It falls to the bottom of our messenger bag with Target receipts and linty gum.
We pack it away with the winter clothes.  Way back in the closet.
It gets hidden behind the boxes of pasta and baking soda,
or gooshy and spoiled in the vegetable bin. 
We have been known to toss it in the recycling by mistake.
Or leave it on the front porch where it gets rained on.
I know I have thrown mine down in the ravine after weeding,
and have tried to relocate it in my garden but it did not take.
One time, I found it rolling around in the dryer like a magic ten dollar bill,
but by the time I took the laundry out, it had vanished.
Everyone knows happiness, but we are careless with it.
We ignore its expiration date.  We don't fill its tires to the right pressure.
We let it take such a long nap that we forget that it is living in our house.
I set mine down like reading glasses, never quite sure if I will recall where I put it.
And it sits, sometimes, on the tip of my tongue -- happiness does --
not coming to me like so many words now.
My brain rushes, panicked to find it,
but all I can do is merely point and say,
"That. That is what I am trying to say. "

Venus in transit

It wasn't until I was on the corner of Fairmount and Lee that I remembered that today was the transit of Venus.  I was riding into the sun, heading west, and I recalled that I was "seeing" something that would not happen again for 105 years.  By the time I made it to Fairmount and Coventry, where some people had set up a viewing station, I thought I ought to pull over and watch the small dot of Venus moving across the sun, but, honestly, I needed to make it to the market for some bananas so I rode on.

Then the really important thing hit me, the most important thing of all.  I would never ride down Fairmount on this day again.  This day, with its North Carolina sky.  This day, with its San Diego perfect seventy.  This day, with its fresh scooter euphoria.

Nor will I ever laugh with Claudia and Adrian the way we did at lunch. I will never cheer for Sirr as I did during mediation try-outs.   I will never fall in love with the new Jason Mraz song, Frank D. Fixer, for the first time as I did just a few hours ago.  I will never link it, as I did, to Tia, someone I wish I could love all the way. I bet I will never have the exact conversation with Sheridan on the porch again.  One in which my four-year-old friend tells me that "if we are ever not with each other for a while, you will hug me because you love me so much." I will never sit as I am sitting now, typing these words of this day.

Venus in transit?  I get it.  The allure of a once in a lifetime planetary event.  Yep.  But, really, isn't every day a once in a lifetime planetary event?  Aren't we just lucky to be here, moment by moment by moment?

More than anything

More than anything, I want assurances.
But knowing that that is not how life works,
I would simply ask for a clear path.
No, not the kind of clear path many have tread upon,
with its packed soil and wild phlox edging the walkway.
I do not need my path to be common or pretty.
I just want a way that gets my attention,
pokes -- oh so gently but firmly -- and says
yes, this is the trailhead now.

Do You Know How Much I Love You?

Lately (and by lately I mean right now), I feel like my heart is swollen to its capacity.  Like I am so full with something like love that I do not know what to do.  Tonight was the poetry play and, my god, those kids were amazing.  Even though I wove the text from things they wrote, and I have heard them practice a gazillion times and even though I chose the music, and we have sung those songs a gazillion and one times, tonight it seemed like a new bloom. 

Carter spoke his lines while his mother, with stage 4 cancer, listened.  Amani's father heard how hard it is since the divorce.  Maddie's mom cried over the story about the sick cat.  Will made everyone laugh. Twice.  Jade spoke with such conviction she shook the house.  I could go on and on.  Jack, with autism, spoke his lines perfectly.  Juliet, sweet tiny Juliet, smiled the whole 50 minutes.  Sam captivated the crowd -- paused so that they were trying to catch every dripping word. And the songs?  All goosebumps and tears. At the end, picture this: 72 kids and 300 of the people that love them singing "Lean on me" -- all clapping on the off beat, all singing with their chins to the clear blue sky.  Every heart open. Every heart.

And somewhere in the midst of it, my own heart got so big I thought my chest would crack and I would die of some kind of tenderness.  I was so proud, so humbled and so shaken by the kids’ earnest trust a good world. The thing that ten-year-olds do the best?  It's make you believe.  Believe in better.

I do not have children, except for nights like tonight when I have 72.  And let me tell you, I am one proud mama.

Fortunately

Fortunately, we get to begin again.  Re-curate who we want to be.  Re-choose the person we are.  Sometimes because of a reckless decision, sometimes through a heart breaking event, sometimes it just happens without knowing over time, and, sometimes, as happened yesterday, we begin again simply by seeing what life is in a new way and wanting to follow its call.

I usually eat alone.  I usually cook for one.  I speak with my neighbors in passing, but rarely sit on their porch.  I have conversations in my head.  I need to know to do, to take action.  I like a safe palette of choices. I love my friends, but sometimes from a distance.  I have created a beautiful home that mostly houses me.  I pendulum between fear and awe-full appreciation. 

I say these things without judgment.  They are just simple facts.

And then, yesterday, I saw a new way.  I saw how easy it is start a conversation with a stranger.  How easy it is to talk about your dead father.  How easy it is to tuck in someone else's bra strap. How easy it is to put a new sheet of paper in a typewriter.  How easy it is to cook for three or four.  How easy it is to pass a plate of food. 

How simply moving a chair from the edge of the dining room to a space at the table changed the the whole feel of the room.  How easy it is to be at the table.

How easy it was to watch someone plop down.  Open doors.  Use the washer.  Make a joke.  Tell a story.  Nuzzle her friend close.  How easy and good it is to simply say good night.  How easy it is to to be gentle and generous.  How easy it is to say yes, not knowing the details. I saw how easy it is to occupy a place and time.  How easy it is to accept, and even welcome, the unknown.  I saw how easy it was to have three beautiful women in my beautiful home, as if it had happened before and as if it will happen again.

Fortunately, something in me softened yesterday.  Something in me roused its sleepy head. Something in me said, "This is the way to be" knowing that I can be it. I am it. 

No one knew today as I tumbled through work -- I might have appeared to be the exact same person I was on Friday before we left for the long weekend.  But I know my insides have been waxed clean.  My brain has been given a dose of now-you-know-more-and-can-be-more.  And my heart feels like it wants to lift me off the ground.

Sit down with love

In church today, I was thinking about my mother,
wishing I could hear her alto next to me,
sweet harmony to the common melody.
Later John said, as part of his sermon,
"You must sit down with love."
Once he said that, I stopped listening to him
and started thinking about this.
Sitting down with love at a round farm table.
Sitting with love to my left and my right.
Using my very best manners with love,
not out of fear anymore but respect. 
Passing love the salt. Passing love the potatoes. 
Making sure love had enough elbow room,
(because I am pretty sure love is left handed.)
I thought about serving love vegetables from the garden
and water, the coldest water, in jelly jars.
I pictured the laughter, the way laughter
shows up on the face, unable to hide.
And talking.  Love talking to us,
but mostly just listening and nodding.
I am certain love would want dessert
and a warm cup of coffee well after the meal.
That love would lean back in the chair,
balancing on two legs, occasionally pulling back,
needing to pull back from the sheer force of it all. 
You must sit down with love,
he said.  And this is what I pictured.
Not exactly what my mother ever gave me,
but what I know she wanted to give all along.

This time last year

This time last year there were droves of birds
singing my my maple tree every night at dusk.
A congregation, a rookery, a bellowing, a sedge.
They would gather and chatter
as if cocktails and hors d'oeuvres
were being served from the spine of the tree.
People walking down Dellwood would stop,
look left and right, finally up, wondering
where the sound was coming from.
I considered it blessing on my land,
a reward for something I had done right.
I would watch them from my porch,
wishing I were one of them, a common finch
crisscrossing the street, lighting for a moment,
filled with something I needed to say.

Determined

Is it possible to make an icon from a found stone or doctrine?
It is, we do. Inscribe a thing with meaning, cinch it to importance.
Somehow, I have plastered someone to my cuff,
I have set her face upon a coin.
I have placed her leaving in the center of the dining room table.

If I must, it is time to be encumbered
by something real: this red pen,
the paper I am writing on,
the spoon in my warm turkey noodle soup.
My skin is soft tonight, my eyes softer,
my heart has beat a ridiculously
determined two million times since she left.

If I am to make an icon, let me make an icon of this:
the millstone, the grinding,
the grain, the creation of bread.
The butter churned, the bread buttered,
the chewing of the hurt into the tiniest morsels possible.

May

The only way to believe is to divorce your grit from your wellspring.  Yes, under the stairwell, you are ankle deep in doubt, but it does not take much to step up into hope,  Listen to May.  The way the lilies preach, trinket white bells ringing.  Listen to the way the tulips pray, mouths open to their song.  Bury your barnacle fear,  that which has partnered you to your smaller self.  Listen to May.  The color embroidery of May.  Yes, the lazy winter you has been sitting in a cozy uncle chair napping.  Wake yourself up. Ordain this moment.  Bless the next next. There is no need to be ginger.  No need to douse yourself with some false perfume.  Smell the May.  Listen to May.  Marry yourself to May.

When we were Faith Leader, then again in Courageous Conversations, I never understood why Grace loved intercessory prayer.  I didn't even really understand what it was.  Praying for someone else?  How could that work?  Not talking with them?  Or seeing them face to face?  How could prayer walk across the invisible air and do anything for anyone else? 

I actually thought it might one of those big christian hoaxes to make the pray-er feel better.  You know how people say stuff like that about us. "They just believe in God because it makes them have a place to place their sadness."  Or, "They believe in Jesus because they just want to get to some false heaven." 

I thought intercessory prayer was like that.

I still did it, mind you, on occasion. For people I know.  Tori.   Deanne.  Lorene.  My father.  My nephew.  My neighbors.  Johanna.  And Grace -- as she prayed for me, I prayed for her.

Honestly, though, I had no idea what or why I was doing. How, exactly, did it work?

But today I got it. 

Chris came back to finish my new kitchen.  I came home from school early, not feeling well.  As soon as I walked in the door, I could feel a red heat coming from him.  He barely looked me in the eye.  He barely said hello.  I just thought he was mad about having to redo work that he had already done once.  Weeks ago, I had told Mike, the contractor, that all of the appliances and cabinets would not fit and, of course, after all of the beautiful work Chris did, they did not.  A fortnight later, here he was again -- Chris -- tearing out old work and rehanging cabinets that would fit the dimension. 

I left my house.  I couldn't stand to be near his energy.  I did not want his energy in my house.  He was building me an angry kitchen.

I planted some peonies.  I tried to start my lawn mower.  He and passed each other several times going to or from the garage. Not a word spoken.

The whole four hours, he was yelling.  Swearing.  Smashing things.  Talking -- hard and fast -- under his breath. 

I had no idea what was going on; Chris had never acted this way. 

I read on the porch, then he called out for me.  I came in and Chris told me that he was coming back "to handle this crazy" tomorrow.  He explained how the new cabinet was not working out because of the slope in the old floor.  No matter how many times he tried, it just wouldn't stay level. 

Then, I don't recall the transition, or how he go to the next thing but then it all came tumbling out.  He hadn't slept in four days.  He hadn't eaten.  He left for work on Friday and by the time he came home, his wife was gone.  Had left him and had flown to Mississippi. How he was nearly forty and had messed up a relationship again.  How she had said he had been working too hard and was never home.  How he was working hard to try to gain money to pay an attorney who was trying to get her daughter back.  How he hadn't had anything to drink or smoke in two years.  How he was a good man who just worked too hard.  How he had tried to kiss her good bye on Friday and she stiffened to his kiss. How his mind was a swirl.  He had gone from normal to insane in one day. How his life flip flopped on him.

My heart leaped out of my heart.  My heart reached out its arms for his heart.

It was so easy to remember that February.  Her leaving.  Not sleeping.  Not eating.  My mind going 6,000 miles an hour. 

So I was suspended there, between his new grief and my old grief.  The sun was setting orange over his truck.  He took off his baseball cap, and rubbed his head.  Shook his head.  Bowed his head.  The disbelief hung on his thin shoulders.

I told him to not worry about my kitchen -- it could wait.  I told him to try to eat, try to sleep.

He finished packing up his tools in the kitchen while I swept.  He stood in front of me for a moment, I touched his shoulder.  Not calmly like in the movies.  I sort of patted him awkwardly.   My eyes too shy to match his eyes, I said, "I wish I could tell you that it will all be okay, but all I can say is to be careful going home.  Be safe with yourself." 

He said, "Ok.  Thank you."

Now, since then, all I can think of is Chris.  Chris, Chris, Chris.  This man who plastered my ceiling.  Who tiled my walls.  Who gave me lights.

And that's how I understand intercessory prayer.  Chris does not know I am thinking about him.  But somehow, I am heavier tonight.  I have willingly picked up his heartache.  I am carrying some of his pain.  He does not know it; he probably cannot feel it  because the kind of pain he is feeling has no left or right.  It's ups and downs are endless.  But, I have picked up some of that infinite ache and it must be helping.  I just know it has to help, because when the whole world prayed for me I know it helped me. 

I did not know how or why then, but tonight I understand.  Parts of me were crumbled into pockets.  Parts of me were scribbled on notes on bedside tables.  Parts of me were talked about over dinner tables.  Parts of me were skipped on thin river rocks.  My name was whispered in the dark.  I was prayed for and those prayers lessened the unburdenable burden.  My friends picked up my pain.  They asked God to carry some of it too.

That's what I am doing tonight.  That's what I will do tomorrow too. 

Hope for Chris.  Think about Chris. Hold Chris up a little bit. 

Pray. Yes, I will pray for Chris.

Rocks in the belly,
suicide worms washed up on the driveway,
algae on the slate stones.
I have just realized that my feet are not webbed, nor is my heart.
If God were sitting next to me on my porch,
I would rest my head on his shoulder.

There would always be a day sometime in spring when my mom would say, "It's time to clean the deck."  My brother and I would pour some laundry detergent into a bucket then grab some hard straw brushes and the push broom.  Then we would scrub the deck.  Slide across the deck.  Spray the deck down, wasting gallons of water.  I'd like to think, though I don't remember, that that would be a night we would eat outside.  I loved that deck -- it's the part of the house I liked best. The tree swung over our heads, the built in bench seating, the flower boxes always filled with red geraniums.

Today was the day I cleaned the front porch.  Milder soap, milder mop too.  But I put some muscle into the floor.  And it seemed to me that everything was happy.  The sun shining down on me.  The birds singing to me.  The wicker seat curling its finger my direction.  "Sit down," it said.  Sit down and watch the world turn green. 

March 16

There is a woman sitting 16 feet to my left. She's studying a thick medical text.  If I listen hard, I can hear her brain thinking.  Metatarsal, phalanges, flexor tendons.  Her mind is a cucumber pie, cantaloupe soup.  Filled with things I will never have to imagine or respond to.  I do not know how my body works beyond the basics.  Food in, poop out.  Hair growing, breasts blossomed and gone to seed.

I know I was conceived on a March night in 1961.  Perhaps it was an evening like this one.  The sky a rosy cove.  Black tree branches, stiff chisels to the silky dusk.  Maybe my dad came home especially present.  Perhaps he illustrated the new configuration of his office on a napkin, leaning in, excited. Or maybe my mom made him a pie, not rhubarb his favorite, impossible to find in the spring, but apple. Yes, apple pie with vanilla ice cream.  Maybe it had nothing to do with what they did for each other.  On that March night, a neighbor may have waved through the screen door.  Or the hydrangea thistle budded, unleashing something green into the air.

That woman 16 feet away from me is studying medicine, but life has nothing to do with what is in her book.  Life draws from the bird's darting caw.  Love is suggested by the spinning top.  By the slightest turn of the eyes. Beginning is something we redo a million times until we get it right.

If it were up to me, I would wish for the night I was made to have been like this one.  Coffee in the pot.  Mushroom soup on the stove.  A song on the hi-fi.  My mother looking at my father again for the first time. He finding her.  The sun and moon in the sky at the same time.  The first blades of grass poking up their heads.  And the sidewalk filled with people walking by.

There is something about this scene that I loved.  The bright light shining on the stark white of the barn.  The rest in shadows.  I find it arresting.  When thinking about it, it's probably because it shows what I feel so frequently.  Yes, no.  Now, then.  Loved, not.  Right, wrong.  Stay, go.  Likable, less.  I spend so much time trying to create a more complex palette, but when in the throws of something -- when my gut is in charge -- I am a pure dualist.  I define the world in such extremes.  I wish, instead, that I could change my perspective and let what is be.  Or better yet, I wish I could -- especially in those snap quick moments -- just feel the gift in it.  Define my life as movement from one beauty to the next.  This barn, so white, is bedazzling because of the black edges, the dark fringe.  It only works in total.  So stay or go, or, perhaps, just give thanks.  Loved or not, just bend in appreciation.  Now or then, just lean into the line I am on.  The infinite number of points, together all, making the path I am on.

Ohio

Ohio, with its noisy spring and its sun-crusted barns,
its wide fields sifting off the winter,
the steel blue sky yawning awakening.
I could have driven all day. 

One reason I like Maya

A friend has fallen in love 4 times in the same time I have just barely recovered from losing it.  She keeps finding the joints, the intersections.  When her brain says go south, she turns the wheel hard.  I hang on the edge of hub, nearly spun off with every rotation, but she slides right into the crux of living.  Centripetal.  Gathering. In the belly of being.

One of the reasons she is good for me

Tia notices everything. She is not like me, the one who took this picture. I know that that black-shoedand black-panted person is me, and I know that I am at work,and I guess there is a child beside me. I think it was someone who had bumped her head in gym. I might be holding her hand. I probably could be telling her, as I so often do, you will be fine. But honestly, this moment, randomly caught by a mistrigger, is nothing I will ever store away, just like so much of my life. Water rushing past river rocks. Clouds passing through a sky. Days lined up, boxes on a shelf. But Tia?  She would know when this happened, why it happened, and how it taught her something, or anchored her life back to its core purpose.  That is one of the reasons she is good for me.

They come back

Even when you forget about the crocuses,
and spend your time worrying about
how the internet's gone down,
or needing to schedule a colonoscopy,
they come back.  While you notice
your hair graying, and your
wrinkles signing a 30 year mortgage to your face,
they poke their sunny purple noggins into sight.
When Super Tuesday fills your mind,
or you start thinking about the new deck
furniture you will have to buy,
the crocuses say come here
out of your faithless faltering,
get down low, bend your head,
bow down to the earth, right here is beauty.
What else could possible matter?
 

Petroglyph

If I had no words, no place like this to scrawl my thoughts, what would I carve into the side of the mountain?  Today, I would chisel in a fat round head attached to a leaking heart.  Wide downcast eyes.  Short arms clutching a stick torso.  Slow, thick feet buried in a slab of muck,   both heading in the wrong direction.  I would stab my sharp stick into the side of the rock face and jab until I ran out of energy.  Until I had stippled out every last drop of disconsolation.  Then I would sit, quiet as a bone, my fat head down staring at my thick feet.

What is not a concert?
Can you hear the robins come home?
The night wind? The creaking of the trees?
The rumble of the furnace?
The rustle of the cold sheets,
The soft notes in her hands?

What is not a meal?
The capo on the strings?
Questions in the dark?
Clear water filling your cup?
The bath filled to the brim?

What is not a bed?
The long smooth highway?
The sturdy shoulder?
The safety of knowing?
The sureness of love?

Estranged son

Blanket Connor with love. Put people in his path to guide and protect him. Help him see some sliver of light every day. Love and guide the ones who surround him now. If they are his source of love, let them be safe and loving. Give him what he needs, then give it to him again. Let him know in obvious tangible ways that the world will not abandoned him. Ease his anger, lighten his darkness.  Keep him safe.  Put angels, how trite a word for such a request, in his path.  Make him stumble over goodness.  Redirect his waywardness to a secure channel. Let him know his only obligation is to his own best interest.  Let him know that he does not have to be or look like anyone else.  He does not have to think or act like anyone else.  Let him sense his own worth. Lift the things that hold him back, hold him down.  Unlock the things that are trapping him.  Blanket Connor with love and care.  Blanket Connor with love and care.  Blanket Connor with love and care. 

I am assured by this good man.
How he is, by doing what he does,
helping to raise these good men.
How every day he shows up,
eager but not anxious, deliberately kind,
unmuttled by other influences.
Just ready.  To smile.  To ask a question.
To field the answer. To raise his eyebrows
and give a loving nod. 

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.

Brown hoodie sweater

One thing I miss about my mother is the fact that I always headed back to school, after Christmas, with an article of new clothing.  No, it might not be the piece she picked out for me (our tastes were different). It often was the trade in purchase, the return swap.  Nonetheless, every January 2nd, I went back to school with something new, the tags just torn off.

This morning, when I was taking out the brown hoodie sweater I bought myself, I realized that I do not have anyone in my life that can or will buy me clothes.  My dad has my brother and me -- we still always pick out something for him to wear. (This year, I got him a cozy light blue pullover and Mark picked out a dress shirt and navy cableknit).  My brother has my sister.  My sister-in-law has Mark.  The kids have their parents.  Cullen has Anne.  Anne has Suzanne.  Lorene has BIll, even if she's pretty direct about what he should buy.

But I have no one.  And Margaret has no one who buys her clothes.  And Johanna is without a dresser as well, I suspect.

That, perhaps, is the sign of true singlehood, of true singleness. And it's something -- like other "mundane" daily care choices - that I miss. Yes, I hope to be in a close partnership sometime.  Not only for the love, the laughter, the ability to hold each other in a soft, safe place.  But I also want, so badly, the knowing.  The person who would pick out the brown hoodie.  The size 18/20 striped underwear.  The perfect kitchen towel.  The person who would stand by my side washing the dishes, shoveling the sidewalk, curling up the hose before it was time for winter.  That's love too. That's being together in the most simple beautiful way.