Living, Spirituality

We are Pilgrims on a Journey

As I sat there listening to music being created right before my eyes, manufactured by human hands up on the stage two tent lengths away, it struck me how amazing the moment was. How lucky I was to be alive and experiencing it. A resounding hum roiling behind my breast bone – the hum of music another om of humanity.

And it is no coincidence that the space music swells is the same place that aches with longing for life, the unnamed.

For where there is a lack, there is also largess.

A void with the ability to be filled.

An ebb and flow

A sacred space that the filling and emptying of reminds us of the balance of life.

For every pain, there will be achingly beautiful joy.

For every time we feel bereft, there will be the overwhelming beauty of belonging, of certainty.

Seeing such music flow from the source brings the magic to life even more. It is the shared experience, the affinity between and among all humankind: a common ache for the sublime, a beatific high when we attain it, and the lonely muddling through when we don’t.

We all are passengers on the same journey, all trying to find our way.

On nights like this, our souls travel together.

“Servant Song” by Richard Gilliard & David Haas

Weekend Write-Off

For the Love of Saab

“In the parking area outside the office stood an extremely old and worse-for-wear Saab 92. It was the first motorcar Saab had ever manufactured, although it had not been in production since the significantly updated Saab 93 had come onto the market. Ove’s dad recognized it very well. Front-wheel-driven and a side-mounted engine that sounded like a coffee percolator. It had been in an accident, the director explained, sticking his thumbs into his suspenders under his jacket. The bottle-green body was badly dented and the condition of what lay under the hood was certainly not pretty. But Ove’s father produced a little screwdriver from the pocket of his dirty overalls and after lengthily inspecting the car, he gave the verdict that with a bit of time and care and the proper tools he’d be able to put it back into working order.

‘Whose is it?’ he wondered aloud as he straightened up and wiped the oil from his fingers with a rag.

‘It belonged to a relative of mine,’ said the director, digging out a key from his suit trousers and pressing it into his palm. ‘And now it’s yours.’

With a pat on his shoulder, the director returned to the office. Ove’s father stayed where he was in the courtyard, trying to catch his breath. That evening he had to explain everything over and over again to his goggle-eyed son and show all there was to know about this magical monster now parked in their garden. He sat in the driver’s seat half the night, with the boy on his lap, explaining how all the mechanical parts were connected. He could account for every screw, every little tube. Ove had never seen a man as proud as his father was that night. He was eight years old and decided that night he would never drive any car but a Saab.”

— from A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Identity, motherhood, parenting

First Day of School

These last few weeks of summer, my own personal atmosphere is experiencing an unsettled weather pattern.

I still don’t feel like I’ve reclaimed my house after my dear friend’s family vacated it. The hole they left is yet unplugged. As are some of the items misplaced by little hands (from both families) and those shoved into disused corners by my and my husband’s as we prepped for their arrival.

The grains of beach sand are quickly slipping through my fingers as time marches on toward the first day of school.

Anxious as a student, who then stupidly served as a teacher for several years, this time of year always winds me up. There are the residual effects of that: feeling as if I need to fit.every.last.experience.in. before the all-consuming task of education took over. (I used to punish myself on one-week school vacations as well; attacking a back-log of to-do lists from the previous semester/s/years) This year, however, there is the added ennui of two big first days of school in the life of my children and in mine as a parent.

My youngest starts kindergarten; my oldest starts middle school.

In perhaps my subconscious’ grandest scheme of self-preservation (um, denial), I hadn’t thought it was a big deal until my mother pointed out that my babies are growing up. Seriously, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I should be freaked out until she mentioned that. Now, as I think about the combination lock I haven’t bought my oldest, the seemingly huge backpack on the little frame of my youngest, my insides are positively vibrating. When I think of the two new student orientations I need to attend next week, I want to vomit.

If I was anxious as a student, now I’ll be hit three-fold. Three little pieces of my heart will be tromping onto the school bus this time two weeks from now.

And what was once met with jubilation – the thought of a six-hour unencumbered stretch – now is also part of this quivering mass of anxiety.

What now?

There will be no one on whom to blame countless hours of Caillou-watching. There will be no warm body that needs snuggling on the couch. There will no one keeping me from doing the things I’ve always dreamed of doing.

Into this void, will rush all my hopes and dreams. All the plans paused in various states of being. Mixed with the lonely ache of missing my now three school-aged children, will be the uncomfortable mania of not knowing where to start, what to do, how to function.

I told my husband I wanted to take some time when they started school to get back to center; that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the land of the living. He said, you never really left, Jen.

It feels like it’s been a long, twisted, disconnected dream – that I can’t even say started with my first days of motherhood. The more I traverse what seem to be ‘normal’ days, the more I realize that the upside down, inside out period I keep waiting to come out of – is actually life.

So the fact that I’ll now be the boss of six unassigned, unencumbered hours of each of my days is a little frightening. Overwhelming, at least.

It’s time to choose what really matters; accountable to no one and for every one of my actions; to work for what I want even when it scares the hell out of me.

It’s an auspicious day for momma, too.

from An Overdue Adventure

Living, Photography

Night on the Town

When you slow down enough to look: there are Singer-Sargent clouds at sunset; a regal nature in rust; a delicate peel of paint. It’s all in the details.

Survival, Weekend Write-Off

Make Room for Ove

“It was the first time since the accident that he heard Sonja laughing. As if it was pouring out of her, without the slightest possiblity of stopping it, like she was being wrestled to the ground by her own giggling. She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest was slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again.”

– from A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

motherhood, Spirituality, Survival

I Am Proud

I see how you drag gray gunk out from under the drain plug with a q-tip
I see how you scrape dark purple nail polish from the bathroom tile
I see the smile you give,

the squeeze of a hand,

the rub of a knee.

How you tackle the monotonous and never-ending mountain of laundry

How you give and give and give
to the point of an extinguished flame

I see how tired you are
yet you keep getting up,
keep going.

I see how you love your children.
You think I don’t notice, but I do.
I see how you bear your pain for them.

Let me bear your pain for you.

Living, Survival

That is all

Sometimes you just need to hide in your car for an hour and 20 minutes burning your cell phone battery.

Weekend Write-Off

For the Love of Ove

“And when she took hold of his lower arm, thick as her thigh, and tickled him until that sulky boy’s face opened up in a smile, it was like a plaster cast cracking around a piece of jewelry, and when this happened it was as if something started singing inside Sonja. And they belonged only to her, those moments.”

– from A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Children, parenting, Survival

Breaking the Surface

If I had told my five-years-ago self that one day I’d be able to sit in a chair at the beach and watch my three children frolic in the water, that self would’ve told me to go jump in that lake.

Even yesterday as I watched just a scene unfold, I couldn’t quite believe it.

Such an occurrence has been hard-fought and won.

And it’s really nothing for which I can take credit. Those little fish just grew of their own accord; tested their little fins and swam.

I somehow managed to keep all our heads above water in the meantime, but suddenly, I find myself with five minutes of peace on the beach.

It is an entirely foreign feeling.

A still, a calm, a quiet I never dreamt I’d get.

In the melee of raising three little ones, I never thought I’d have time to catch my breath, to rest a moment, to sit back and observe.

Jennifer Butler Basile

It’s one of those moments where time suddenly seems to stop and a truth of life is filed.

There are certain things I’ve overcome; certain markers I’ve hit; bits of joy to digest.

They’re hard to recognize when being pulled along with the current, but there are blessed moments of buoyancy.

One day we’ll all be able to bob to the surface.

Living, Mental Health, Survival

Self-Care: A Cautionary Tale

I didn’t eat breakfast.

I drank caffeine.

I didn’t take my meds.

I stared at the computer screen all day.

I reread a beautiful, but sad book.

I cried hand-clamping tears.

I had a late lunch.

I didn’t get dressed until 4 PM.

I fought with my husband.

I looked things up online by only the light of my phone.

I went to bed too late.

—————————————

I awoke at 5:45 to the crash of thunder,
the wind whirling,
the rain pummeling.
Mother Nature matching my disconcertment.
Trees torn from their roots,
leaves littering the ground –
a mess of downed limbs and debris.
But soon the sun is shining,
the water a glaze of calm.