Let the summer teach me

Like the sky, be wide. Massive and always present.  Shift and move, calibrating your speed and spin to the circumstance.  You are allowed to shine.  You are allowed to float dreamily.  You are allowed to hover and drop a deluge. 

Like a cloud, realize that everything evaporates and transforms.  Shift, billow, fill, roil, darken. Or be pure white.  Refuse to become static.  Fix your gaze, not your being.  You can be amorphous and fluid.  Change.

Like the sun, know that part of you burns intensely.  Is always burning, sending out flares.  There is no night for the sun.  Stoke the fire, blow smoke.  Send up a signal.  Be warmth, be hot.  Stir and be stirred. Engage, create friction. Give your light away without hesitation or preference.  Do not apologize for the space you take up.  Let people be drawn to you, orbit you.  It’s okay to step into the center.

Like the grass, grow. Propagate, cultivate.  Mow when you need to, trim away the hairy parts.  Coiffed or tangles, present yourself in many ways.  Fertilize yourself; you know what you need to flourish.  Be flat, be ordinary, rest still. Go dormant if it gets too hot. Get weedy, bust out in clover.  Every aberration is acceptable.  What needs to happen in you will happen. 

Like the flowers, be expectant.  Know the sun will shine, the rain will fall, the soil will be nourished.  You are part of an amazing cycle that feeds itself. Relax. Gluttonously seek southern light. Flush the landscape with color. Be a subtle or saturated hue.  Seed yourself and, if that’s not possible, gather pollinators. Prune and pinch away.  Give yourself room to spread; know you will get bigger.  You are meant to expand, meant to be noticed. Bring pleasure to place.   Be cut and tied into a bouquet. Let yourself be the first gift of love.   

Talk more and in greater depth

Today I watched Oprah interview Karen Armstrong, a former nun, who lost her faith in the convent and found God years later.  Like Oprah is so wont to do, she focused on Armstrong's convent experience at 17, the silence, the dark hours of crying as a novice, the hours of stitchwork, the periods of nausea and fainting.  Thirty-seven minutes of the hard stuff, and then, for the last five minute segment, several of Karen's best selling books, including The History of God. 

The frigging History of God.  I would have liked to have heard more about that, wouldn't you? Or, instead of losing faith, I would have liked Oprah to talk more and in greater depth about the glimpses of faith Karen experienced.  Karen was ripe for it, kept hinting at it, but Oprah stayed in the recollection of victimization, the hurt. 

I just looked up the various Hebrew words for faith. 

Chessed, to carry

Chasah, a wolf chasing a rabbit - to seek shelter

Qaway, a rope that can't be broken

Yachal, to trust when you are hurting

Batach, to trust with all your heart

Aman, to believe, to lean on 

Oprah, who has - perhaps - the largest platform in the world, chose to stay in the story of the hurt. It made me think, tonight, about how I use this blog too frequently as a stiff bed of complaint and worry.  That I am still too much and too readily influenced by the things that have hurt me in the past. All yachal, no batach. 

For that, forgive me.  I'd like to say I will tell more stories of goodness and grace, but I know that sadness and joy calibrate the heart to its equilibrium.  At least for me. 

Tonight, I cut my own hair.  Even though Laura gave me a cut ten days ago, it just did not seem convincing enough.  I thought back to Miami University, meeting Mark Shump, him telling me that I had "fast hair."  This last cut seemed like a 20 mph cut, an old man in a big Lincoln cut.  So I took to the bathroom, grabbed the scissors and tried to imitate what I have watched Laura do for the last 10 years.  There is, without a doubt, a big clump of unevenness above my right ear, but, that's okay.  I feel better.  My head feels just right.  

Why these two stories in one blog?  Because Karen Armstrong found her way home.  And my head found its way to happiness.

Too often, it will be convenient to distract ourselves with the past, the pain, the wrong-doing and the undone.  I will tell you again, I am sure, about the Big Hurt and the Want to Drive into a Tree periods of my life.   I will do that until I do not need to do that anymore.  

But I want you to know - no, I want me to know - that we can fix anything.  We are designed to conquer.  To grow.  To change.  To seek happiness.  To prune the things that are holding us back, even if it is only a big hunk of floppy bangs. 

Karen Armstrong, if you are out there, I wish you would come to my house.  Sit on the front porch and get an hourlong Jean Reinhold interview.  I'd ask you about those glimpses of faith you see.  I would ask you how you know God now.  How you use studying as prayer.  How you would bridge the gaps of ignorance between cultures arguing over religions.  What it feels like, now, to not have a wolf chasing you.  What it feels like to hold the strong rope of God.  I would ask you about your history of God, and I know, after you commented on my stylish new haircut, you would ask me about mine.  I could tell that about you, even if Oprah couldn't. 

Before the carpet came

I knew I was going to buy my house after walking into it just ten feet. And I knew I would redo the upstairs into a master suite with an art gallery wall the first time I went to the second floor of the bungalow.  It took awhile to save the money, but about thirteen years ago, I hired a guy who redid the whole place starting from scratch.  

On various days, he would tell me what I had to get done because he had subcontracted out a job that was going to happen soon.  One night I had to paint the new bathroom.  (Holding my breath on an eight foot ladder, yikes). Another night, I had to lay down two coats of creamy yellow in the 700 square feet main area. 

The night before the carpet came, I decided to do something to the subfloor.  Just at the top of the steps I painted the words: New Space.  Then, where the couch and the desk and TV were to go: Live Here.  And in the north wing, where the bed was going to be placed: Fall in Love.  Smack in the middle: Be Free.  I used the raspberry paint from the bathroom.  A wide four inch brush.  

At that time, I was far from realizing any of those encouragements -- I was not particularly free nor engaged in living.  I certainly had been too afraid to love. But the words did their magic work, and soon after completing that new space, new things emerged.  I met a girl. I fell in love.  I loosened the knots of fear, at least a little. 

Since then, lots of things have happened, most of them good.  Don't know that girl anymore.  Am not in love, except with my next door neighbor's baby. (Who, yowzaaa, reached out for my hug today for the first time). 

I am, though, happier than I was thirteen years ago, or ten, or eight, or six -- for sure six -- because I am not afraid anymore. 

It would be pretty expensive to rip up the carpet and pepper the subfloor with some more subconscious influences.  What would I write now?  Live, love, be free -- those still apply.  But I would add: Be the bravest. Talk here, in the dark.  Go one step farther.  Think bigger.  Turn the TV off.  Be faithful.  Trust yourself.  Love bigger.  Make beautiful things.  Don't waste time.  Yes, those would good words to be under my feet, under my space.  

Instead, I have done something else intentional.  I bought this quilt.  This pink and flowery and striped quilt.  And the pink-salmon colored sheets to go with it.  Soft sheets, the expensive Target brand.  :) And, I know that the next person to lay down with me will be the first person to share that quilt.  It might not happen this summer.  Maybe not even next.  That's okay.  Time does what time wants to do.  But someday, I will lay down, rest and snuggle again.  We will talk in the dark.  We may even fall in love and love big.  

And, someday, after we have talked about the things that create the plush firm comfort of a new "us" -- after we talk about scars and houses, station wagons and trips to Maine, college pranks and age spots, losses and losing, the moments of fear and embarrassment, the times we finally discovered ourselves --  when she asks me about the quilt and the perfectly worn sheets, I will tell her, "When I bought them, I got them for you."  And these words, here tonight, will be the ones I painted prove it. 

June 7th

Every Friday, two poems 
exchange homes. I get one 
from Decatur, Georgia, and
Decatur gets one from me. 
My email box tings, and there it is, 
like ice cream, like cold sheets, 
like a baby clapping her hands. 
Tonight, I do not know what to write, 
how to pick.  Should I tell her about 
sitting around the table with the fourth grade 
team this morning, the blue post-it notes, 
the blush rising from words of praise?
Or Tommy and John racing
toe to toe, neck to neck, 
in the third grade Fun Run?
Maybe, I could try to describe 
the maternal feeling I had
when Katie told me about Google camp. 
How, even though she is not my child, 
something expansive in me aches with pride.
Or, I could try to explain the sound of field day, 
the lilting of three hundred fifty voices
outside my window, though, honestly, 
there is no way to describe a sound so sweet.  
It would be like trying to describe 
the smell of spring air. Some goodness 
needs no metaphor, suffers when words are used. 
Maybe I could pen something about my niece, Sarah, 
who does not know how beautiful she is.
How I hope, when she looks back at herself 
years from now, she will see what we see. 
I could write about my new quilt, 
how I will put it over new sheets, 
a smoke signal sent out for a new love. 
Or, I could tell her about the first summer 
fire pit, four of us talking and laughing, 
Cullen stoking the flames, 
the steady glow of warmth, of light, 
filling the circle.  Or the embers now.
How they burn and burn, like this day
which, in its fullness, is not ready to end. 

Ohio ~ Patty Griffin

A flood of news in the feed. One friend married, 
she to her longtime partner, diamond bands 
and announcements. And your missive, 
about the way messages between you and your love 
alternate black and red on the kitchen typewriter. 
My heart alternates red and black, too.
Again, I thought I just may not make it.
I may not be able to outlast this loneliness.
Yesterday, I got a reiki treatment at the nunnery.
Before we began, one woman covered my eyes
with white tissue paper. Then two women,
Nancy and Peg, laid their four hands
on me. They could not see, but underneath
the mask, I was crying. One wet long tear,
a fifty-minute tear. It seemed like
every cell was speaking to me, was deciding,
was urging on that part that’s about to give up.
Hold on, Jean, myself told me. Hold on.

Lorain and West 44th

Today was one of those days, that so many odd things happened, I suspected I might have entered a parallel universe.  Luckily, I found Carnegie Road at some point, and got myself back home.  

It all started with the man who was flirting with me over a big bag of Grub-Ex in Home Depot.  He had no teeth.  

But the best part of the day was a very strange -- somehow sacred -- moment at a gas station on the west side. I pulled up to the pump with 8 miles left in my tank, so I had to stop.  The place was packed.  One woman kept asking a worker if her granddaughter could use the bathroom, because she could not hold her poopie anymore. (The girl was about thirteen).  "Tell the man, baby," the grandmother shouted, "Tell the man that your poopie's gonna come out."  

Then, as I was pumping gas, a woman in a beat up station wagon said, "There's a mouse over there.  Having babies."  I just kept pumping as people gathered around this narrow area between the base of the pump and a column.  The woman spoke again, "I don't want to move my car.  She's just a mama after all.  I don't want to surprise her."  She pointed her tattooed arm back to the area, "You really should go look."  

I smiled.  Two boys walked over to the pump in front of me to fill up a huge 2 gallon plastic container.  The grandmother who was yelling about the bathroom said, "You boys ain't gonna fill that up.  You're not old enough to dispense gas."  They shrugged, started walking away; everyone listens to the grandmother in the crowd. "But," she added, "you should go look at the mouse babies." They did.  

By then, the station clerk, the Latina station wagon driver holding her own child, two boys and a man and women from the street were gathered around the birthing.  

I had to go to see too.  

And there she was, a mouse having babies.  Six of them already out, her abdomen still filled with a couple more.   Just hunched there, doing her thing, even with all of the commotion.  I was sure someone was going to say something about killing the mother.  Or killing the babies.  After all, we are a mouse-fearing nation. Me included.  But no one did, we all just stood there watching.

One of the boys asked, "Is she okay?"  We all assured him that, yes, the mouse was just doing what mice do.  "Are those babies okay?"  We all nodded. "They don't look okay, they're so pink." We assured him again.  He said, "Look at the way you can see their eyes, those black dots.  It's so cool." 

And it was. Cool. 

This odd collection of people, strangers, marveling at birth.  Standing guard to the mama.  Amazed at the tiny eraser-colored babies.  The way they unfolded and squirmed. 

I have a friend who runs a llama and alpaca farm and she has seen dozens of crias born.  I suspect she has helped a time or two.  And I stayed at a ranch a few years ago a day after a baby calf was born.  A bet most of you have had babies or watched your wife give birth.  It's a foreign idea to me, really. But not, somehow too.  

We all watch wide-eyed.  We all hold our breath.  Even when it's just a mouse, and the offspring we will one day grow to hate, trap.  Be afraid of.  Yes, even then. 

We just can't help it; every baby amazes us.  And so does every mama.