Ironic Tosh of Fate

Irony.

When I titled yesterday’s blog entry, I had a song from the early career of Bob Marley and the Wailers in my head. I searched in vain for a recording or video of it, finding only a much slower version. The version I remembered had more of a rock-steady beat than rolling reggae one. A few comments online reminded me that it was Peter Tosh singing that version (with the Wailers) anyway.

I gave up the hunt, but got the ironic twist that, though the universe was handing me a slower beat, I still wanted the frenetic one.

And I remembered that a character I’d written – if whom bares any resemblance to her author is purely coincidental – blasted that song in her car as she tried to outrun her problems.

After muddling her way through study hall and forcing concentration in the rest of her classes, Kathryn finally flopped into the front seat of her car. She stared out the front window. She put the keys in the ignition, but did not turn them. She just sat. She sat and thought about nothing and everything all at once. She took vague notice of the cars moving and leaving around her, but only when they moved directly across her line of sight did her eyes actually focus. When she finally noticed that there had been no movement around her for quite some time, she looked around to see hers was the only car left in the parking lot. She reached her feet towards the clutch and brake pedal and her hand towards the keys. Peter Tosh’s voice suddenly flooded the insides of the car and ran down her eardrums and into her brain. She was awake now. Maybe the rock-steady would steady her nerves and take her out of this funk. She moved the gearshift into first and grasped the steering wheel.

Kathryn left the parking lot without having any idea of where she was going. It was as if her car was on autopilot and eventually she found herself on the highway. All the while, she bounced in time to the music and occasionally would break into song, but all of this was secondary. It was as if her body and car were simply performing a routine; her consciousness really wasn’t along for the ride. As she moved on, off, and around the major arteries surrounding the city, moving in one big loop, she had no destination. She let the CD loop continuously as the steering wheel slid loosely between her fingers.

The sun finally dipped so low it angled itself right into her windshield and her eyes. She realized it was probably time to go home. She put on her left blinker to signal her way into the passing lane. Just as she edged her way around the car in front of her, she saw the two stripes of black rubber on the road. They started right where her front tires were now and arced away from her in a gentle curve until they ended at the Jersey barrier and a broad metallic smudge and gouges began. She almost wanted the car to follow them the way her eyes had – but why? Because it was a natural progression? Because she felt she was already set up on that path? Because it was easier to continue on an established path than to start a new one not even forged yet?

Suddenly the deep bass line of another Peter Tosh song resounded through the car speakers and she jerked the car back into line with the others. She shook her head and took a deep breath. She gripped the steering wheel, her fingers resting in the grooves meant to keep her hands in place, in control, and began to sing along:

“Stop the train, I’m leavin’, stop the train, I’m leavin’ believe me when I say, stop the train, I’m leavin’, said it won’t be too long whether I’m right or wrong, won’t be too long whether I’m right or wrong.”

Personal resemblance to our characters – especially when they do things we don’t like – is a whole ‘nother discussion. But there it was. Stop the train, I’m leavin’. Maybe I can shut my mind off long enough to disembark and get back to center.

In the meantime, I can at least listen to some kick ass music.

Editorial note: Thank you for respecting my intellectual property and not sharing my work with others without my permission – unless of course you know an editor who needs new talent ; )

anxiety, Living, Spirituality

Stop This Train

How do I shut off the interior noise?

How do I ignore the gritty, tacky texture of frosting on my fingertips and ringing the ring on my finger?

How do I remember that the ashes on my forehead are an outward sign that everything I do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

How do I stay focused with the distraction, the inability to focus, gravity pulling me elsewhere, my eyes to the side when they need to be focused front and center?

My brain feels fuzzy. It has that detached feeling that comes with being unhinged. “Unable to prioritize” as the postpartum/anxiety literature says. That’s a nice neat term for what I’m feeling. A gross oversimplification of the split between my rational and emotional selves. I can prioritize. My mind can still order things, ranking them in order of importance. But my [free will, stubborn mule, FU factor, overwhelmed stressball of anxiety – pick one or all of the above] ignores that list, places it behind a film so the suggestion of it is there, but I can’t quite grasp it.

In the sleep-deprived days following the birth of my third, I finally came to understand what my grandmother and other relatives described as a futile searching for a word in conversation. You know what you want to say. The idea is fully formed in your head, but you cannot transmit it out your mouth and to the understanding of those around you. Grasping, pinching, clutching, coveting those words, like a linguistic Scrooge, you can’t pull the one you need down from the clouds in your head. You would share if only you could. Being at a loss for words truly brought home how sleep deprived I was. With the birth of the second, third, et al, child, you don’t have a choice but to continue on with the routine of your family as if nothing happened except a new addition to your family and sleepless nights. It’s easy to ‘forget’ or repress how damn tired you are – until you stammer like a blithering idiot because you truly cannot form a sentence.

That’s the sensation I get now – only not with words, but thoughts. I cannot light on one particular thought before being pulled to another before it’s fully formed, and another and another, ad infinitum, until I write obsessive lists because I’m so desperately afraid that one most important thought will fly out of my head.

With my three year-old chatting next to me and the priest’s microphone shut off for the second half of mass so his words only slightly permeated the walls of the cry room, I actually did get some peace. Before the microphone went off, a handful of most important words permeated the walls of my heart. Everything we do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Comforting and terrifying at the same time. The ashy smudge on my forehead, at least for today, gives me a tangible reminder to hold my tongue, cull my words carefully, not let my obnoxious, self-absorbed anxiety-ridden self rule my role as mother, wife, human being. I want to ooze peace, love, and hair grease (well two of the three anyway). I’m in my own miserable little world lately, but I need to relate to the greater world and try to improve at least my little corner of it.

It’s hard to break out of rotating loop of mindchatter, though. – especially when it comes at you like the feed from a manic channel surfer.

So how to do it? Shut off the TV by going to sleep? Prayer? Beating my head against the wall? Go on vacation?

Any suggestions?

Living

Winter is Coming*

I saw a man gathering kindling in his arms. A backhoe sat idling nearby. Was he collecting that much wood or was he planning on ramming trees to the ground for firewood? And the logs that he had gathered, had they sat long enough on the forest floor to kindle a fire tomorrow when the snow comes?

I moved to the country just as the cold season started. ‘Seasoning wood’ was a term somewhere on the horizon of my consciousness. It was not something I needed to understand or attend to. Luckily the people we bought our house from left some logs stashed in the back of the garage, seasoned from last year’s growing season.

The image of that man hugging a bundle of logs close to his chest made me wonder. Will those logs in the garage be enough if we lose power this weekend? And what about the stack of logs in our backyard, sawed and split after Hurricane Sandy? Will they watch in moldy moisture as we freeze when our seasoned wood runs out?

And then I wondered . . . what did people do before meteorology? Did we actually have to pay attention to our surroundings and changing seasons and be prepared? Were we ants to today’s grasshoppers?

I hear the calls for bread and milk. For full gas tanks and new snow blowers. I see the last-minute hustle of wood gathering.

I do not see the storm clouds yet. I do not feel that raw damp that precedes snowfall.

If it weren’t for advanced radar, we might get caught unawares.

But were any true New Englanders ever caught unawares? As much as their means would allow, the pantries were stocked, the log pile stacked, the hatches battened.

Modern life had made us soft; has made us forget how to pay attention to our surroundings and react accordingly.

We rely on the convenience store down the street for our jug of milk, the mindless flick of a thermostat for heat, the talking head on TV when to tell us to be alarmed.

Good old Yankee ingenuity and self-reliance never hurt anyone. Maybe it should make a comeback.

* As should Game of Thrones, which I no doubt would be watching during this storm – if the power didn’t go out and the next season didn’t start after the season of winter is over!

Living, Poetry, Spirituality, Writing

Crystalline

The country road I drove down this morning looked magical.

A feathered path down its middle where the few cars had passed.

A vortex of flakes pulling me through the windshield.

Boulders, trees, leaves touched by a light dusting.

The magic messed with by industrial orange dump trucks spewing their salt,

but reemerging in a parking lot, of all places.

A perfectly formed star pulled from the sky and placed on the fleece forest of my glove.

Another and another.

In relief against the black rubber strip of my car,

the honey colored curls of my daughter,

the harsh, manipulative world we live in.

A tiny reminder of

the awesome, wondrously made world we sometimes forget we live in.

Identity, Living, Technology

Keep Calm and – well, you know

I guess I want to be George Takei.

When he first exploded on the internet with his clever and quirky posts, I thought, who died and made him king of our on-line kingdom? How did Sulu earn the clout to be our trendsetter and meme-maker? There were two things that let me rationalize enjoying his posts: the fact that many were freakin’ hilarious and that, well, he’s Captain Sulu.

Then the other day, feeling incredibly down and tired, I opened my blank book hoping to release whatever funk was plaguing me. I stared at the blank pages, too tired to form thoughts and too tired to get up and shut off the radio that was also distracting me. Then this song came on:

In that weird way that the universe seems to speak to us from time to time, the lyrics of this song said exactly what I needed to hear. That we’ve all been in that funk and need to keep going until we pull out of it. One of those great realizations that make us feel alive again. And I thought, how wonderful it would be to share this feeling.

Enter blogging. Facebook. Twitter. What have you.

The perfect platform to share favorite quotes, songs, photos, jokes. All those clever and quirky things that bang around in our heads and until social media didn’t have anyplace to go – except the backs of notebooks, bottoms of scribbled notes, and countless collages that littered my bulletin board or inside of my locker growing up.

Maybe I was snarky about George Takei’s meteoric rise to fame because I envied it. We all have a little Sulu inside us, I guess. Now, engage, and carry on!

anxiety, Living

Call in the Astronomers

I hate a whole week’s worth of list staring at me. Seven entrées marching across the menu of my life. A calendar scattered with to-dos and appointments bookended by trips to and from the bus stop.

A thousand grains of sand – insignificant events – piled up to smother me.

I cannot compartmentalize, tackling one manageable item at a time. Trivial, minute tasks threaten to overwhelm me simply because they come all at once. Like a student with an IEP, I need my work broken into more manageable chunks and fed to me one at a time so I don’t choke. But I don’t have a case manager. I am my case manager and I can’t ignore the subsequent steps I know are coming for the sake of the present one or my sanity. Just like I can’t fall for the set-my-clock-fast-so-I-won’t-be-late trick. I always subtract the minutes and fight against that clock trying to fit squeeze every second for what it’s worth. I see right through the subterfuge.

And then I remember the words of a visiting priest this past Sunday. He reminded us that there are millions more stars in the sky than all the grains of sand in the world. If even the mass amounts of sand are dwarfed by the all the stars in the sky, how small are we? How infinitesimal our blip on the radar of the universe. How trivial our concerns and worries and to-dos that seems so life-altering when we encounter them.

This is not unlike the advice my therapist gave me a year or more ago, which still proves relevant: The 10-10-10 rule.

Will this matter in ten minutes?

Will this matter in ten months?

Will this matter in ten years?

Yes, in ten minutes, I’ll probably still be worrying and obsessing over it, but in ten months or ten years? Doubtful.

Our visiting priest also quoted a South African astronomer, who when a world war was imminent and battle lines were being drawn, told policymakers and strategists, do not call politicians or soldiers to solve the world’s problems, call in the astronomers. How much grander is the universe than our little corner of it? How petty even multinational concerns in the grand scheme of all creation?

I have a newfound love for astronomers. I think we should employ them in all things personal and global. What a different world it would be if we gazed heavenward from time to time instead of always being bogged down by the drudgery of the corporeal. After all, we are all made from dust and to dust we shall return. And we all know dust is way outnumbered by stars.

Legacy, Living

Gratidão

There are many things for which to be thankful:

The kickass song by a local ska group* for which this blog entry is titled.

Education – without which I wouldn’t be annoyed that I have to shift around the above two sentences so they don’t end in a preposition.

A Facebook meme that focuses on something positive and productive for once – albeit every single day of this month.

The light of a skylight encircling me and my laptop as I write.

The tenuous hold we have on this earth.

The tenacious grip of a frail relative determined to hold on.

(Oops, broke that rule about prepositions)

Humor and its ability to help us carry on.

(Despite conventions 😉 )

A full-on arms-and-legs-wrapped around hug from a toddler.

A gentle hug from my first whose head now nestles into my midsection she’s so tall.

The shy smile of my middle daughter whose quiet strength is not to be taken for granted.

Love – strong, old and new, ever changing, enduring.

The wistful look of an elderly woman – reminding me of the immense gifts right under my nose.

Remembrance, reminders, traditions that connect the present and the past and put us in better mind for the future.

* The Agents

anxiety, Identity, Living

A Change in Me

I was totally on my game last night. I mention it because it is so not me. I was laughing, telling jokes, comfortable, making comments without much worrying about what people would think of me. In other words, I was my authentic self. Not insecure, not worried, not painfully self-aware. And there were times throughout the night when I realized this and took note; not quite like an out-of-body experience watching it from afar, but my insecure or irrational or timid mouse inner self noticed and was pleasantly surprised. And then I tried to tell her to go away, to enjoy it for what it was worth, to follow this relaxed, uninhibited self however far she would go. Not to jinx it, second-guess it, scare her away with too many self-checks and ruminations. And now I think of the Halloween party we went to last Saturday. My kindergartener was invited to a classmate’s family party. Their neighbors were there, family members, other classmates and their families. Walking in to a crowd of ‘strangers’ was a bit daunting, but surprisingly only a little. A playmate’s mom soon walked up and introduced herself. I found the host’s mom and introduced myself. I sought out other classmates’ parents. I told jokes. I talked to strangers. I initiated conversations. I was so not me. But then, I said to my husband, I was on my game. Because that is me – part of me, anyway. The part that is uninhibited, comfortable in her own skin, totally inhabiting the spacious self that is she. My authentic self.

Is it this place? Is it the excuse, the opportunity of a change in place to make things happen, to reinvent myself? Because I could’ve done all these things in my former home. But I didn’t. Was it the memory and residual trauma of postpartum? Was it the repression of people who knew me from way back when, when I was a certain way? Was it the familiar that I began to blend into? I was scared. I was stuck. Now I’m free. I don’t know if it’s the physical space that now surrounds us that is freeing us; the mental space that in turn affords (if you believe if in the elements of Feng Shui); the need to ground ourselves and make connections since we don’t have any. But life seems to be shaping up. And me right along with it.

anxiety, Identity, Living, Writing

A Rock to Remember

Last week, I was forced to go to the beach.

I was cranky. I was tired. It was a holiday and all three kids were home, but my husband was working. I still had tons of tedious tasks to do to get settled in the new house.

My parents said, it’s a beautiful day, let’s go for a walk.

I walked from the breach way to the border of this same beach with my parents when I was a girl. It was like coming full-circle treading it this day with my own children a short distance from the place I now call home.

The girls dove straight into rock hunting with my mother. I didn’t even have to chase my three year-old out of the waves, as she plopped down in one spot and proceeded to sift and stack. I sat down, too, and gave myself over to the sound of the rocks chattering against each other in the surf.

My other home was a short walk from a small inlet on Narragansett Bay. It was a lovely spot and we were fortunate to live so close to it (though we didn’t make the trek nearly enough). But it had nothing of the raw power and expansiveness of this beach, the open ocean. I am not used to the mass amounts of rocks, perfectly pounded and rounded by the constant tumbling of the sea. The smooth spheres of granite, mica, and other minerals I should remember from science class and Rhode Island history. Their shapes were so alluring to me, beckoning me to pick them up, roll them in my hands.

And so I did. I sat just apart from my daughter’s sifting and sorting and felt the weight in my hands. The cool heaviness, the sun-soaked pressure. I searched for the one that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. Then I spun it round and round, the smooth surface soothing me in a way that didn’t seem needed, but became suddenly essential.

I felt my hackles lowering, my blood slowing in my veins, my body decompressing, my soul expanding. I was running, running, running so quickly, so constantly, that I didn’t even know how wound up I was. I didn’t know how much I needed the salve of the sea.

I recalled a stretch of preteen fall days when a friend and I rode our bikes to the sand flats with our notebooks and sketchpads. I was so disappointed that I was caught without a notebook when the muse was so apparently calling to me, when an epiphany was beating me over the head with a smoothly-shaped rock. I hoped beyond hope that I could bottle this feeling and bring it home with me. It’s been diluted over the last week, but I did bring some rocks home with me as reminders. I picked out some beautifully speckled, striated, spotted ones that I stacked into cairns in my garden. I selected two larger ones to use as worry rocks, prayer stones, literal talismans to ground me; I planned to give one to my husband so he could benefit from my lesson, too.

As I kneaded these rocks in my hands, I thought of the many manifestations of humanity’s need for physical reminders of the spiritual side of life, of our souls. Kachina dolls, worry dolls, worry stones, chime balls, stress balls, rocks perched on gravestones, relics . . . there are so many examples. But they all begin at their basest level with a bit of the natural world. There is a reason humans turn to nature to reset their moods, their demeanors, their selves. While I cannot put my finger on it, there is something about it that resonates in our souls. I’ll just have to wrap my hand around those rocks each time I forget.

anxiety, Identity, Living

Liminal and Beyond

“The Waiting Place . . . [a most useless place]

for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to come or go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.”

As I was waiting for the will to write a positive blog entry today, these lines from Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go rang through my head.

I’m waiting. For the end of PMS. For the washing machine to finish its cycle. For an expected tradesperson to show up. My husband to come home from work. My children to stream up the stairs and into the corner in which I’m hiding (which took one more line of typing, by the way). For this new place in life to feel ‘normal’, to reach some sort of stasis.

Well into On Moving by Louise DeSalvo now, I’ve read about “liminal life – the life that is neither here nor there . . . These difficult-to-live-through interstices, I’ve read, are necessary for growth: the psychic spaces where the old self is shed and the new one begins to develop (DeSalvo 72).

A few weeks ago, I said that I felt I could become my authentic self in this house. I didn’t realize how much the move would shake things up though – both our physical possessions and my own psychological foundations. Everything can’t feel just as it did in the other house, though, because then I’d fall into familiar routines and frustrating ways of being. Now’s the chance to fix things that are broken. Discard things that are hindrances. Create new ways of living and doing and being that improve our life, not just get us through it. I wouldn’t have done that in the comfortable nest of my other home.

On the flip side, I cannot ignore the pieces of myself that will remain no matter where I am, those rituals that will follow and sustain me wherever I go. DeSalvo said, “I’ve been waiting to ‘settle in’ before I start writing. But writing will help me ‘settle in’.” (DeSalvo 88) Just as there are certain beloved objects that will travel from home to home and comfort with their mere presence, so must I make time to practice these rituals that will soothe me.

I cannot wait for everything in my home to be set up perfectly before I roll out the yoga mat. I cannot avoid writing until the perfectly appointed writing desk sits in its nook. I cannot avoid ‘living’ while I run through my unpacking/set-up list. If I ignore those foundational elements of myself that will indeed make anywhere I live a home, the window of liminal time will close and this chaos will become my life.

No more waiting.

This is not ‘the waiting place’. These are the living rooms. This is home. It’s time to start feeling it.

Chopping Potatoes

and other metaphors for motherhood

Category Archives: Living