It’s the middle of the week, my friends! So what have we covered so far?
You get good at what you practice.
Practice Makes Progress.
And now a few words from my buddy, Plato, and a baby sea turtle:
If you know someone who is plugging along, share this message with some encouragement! Have a great day.
We are made up of what we feed ourselves.
I have lost my mojo. Misplaced my mojo. OK, to be honest, my mojo has been devoured by zombies this week.
There’s a marathon of The Walking Dead on AMC so I’ve been catching up on the first two seasons of this awesome show. Now I finally understand why Carol is so quiet and how Maggie and Glen met and when Carl learned to shoot and why everyone hated Lori and just how much, how very much, I love Daryl. So much that I want to give him a long hot bath and cut his forelock. Mmm, mmm, MMM. I do love a man with a crossbow and a steady moral compass.
Fifteen hours of zombie dystopia packed into three days may have been a tad too much. I have been sad, paranoid and unfocused for days. Granted, some of it has to do with staying up past midnight too many times in a row. I’m lethargic from sitting on the couch. The house is going to pot and the refrigerator is empty. I haven’t been writing like I was. I worry that I don’t have the skills to protect myself and my children in the event of an outbreak of zombie fever. I can shoot, but only if they stand still. I can forage, but mostly in Kroger. I can survive in the wild, as long as I have a car charger and wi-fi. I would be as vulnerable as T-Dog in a red Star Trek shirt. This knowledge is BRINGING ME DOWN.
The fatigue is eating my brain from the inside. So when a lady flipped me off after I had let her into traffic, I let it get to me for a whole day. When my daughter complains about dinner, it hurts my feelings. If the cat delivers a mole to the doorstep, I futz and futz and futz instead of just slinging it into the neighbors’ yard (they’ve moved…and not because we pelt them with carrion). Normally, negative things roll off me, but not this week. They are eating into my flesh!
It reminds me of a science lesson on cell structure. (Actual scientists or science teachers should probably stop here…SPOILER ALERT…I’m not very good at science). We are made up of cells that are contained within semipermeable membranes. Everything in us is in the process of exchanging, absorbing, passing through. I think this applies on the grand scale, too. Even though we are solid enough to keep the insides in and the outsides out, we are permeable–we let things through.
Have you ever done the experiment where you stick a daisy or carnation in a vase filled with dyed water? Within the hour, the daisy will take on the color in which it is immersed. Or have you dyed eggs this week? We absorb, too, just like the flower or the eggshell. If I immerse myself in a world of fear and desperation, guess what starts to show on my petals?
Last night, I sat down to watch more of The Walking Dead. At the end of the first hour, Dale was dispatched by Daryl with a violently generous act…and then some dumb show about taxidermy came on. WHAAAAAT??? Only one hour of zombies??? I checked the cable guide and discovered that it was true…no more walkers for me. I flipped over to “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and enjoyed two hours of pleasantly delightful British pensioners opening themselves to life in Jaipur. Ahhhhhhhh.
Permeability has its good side, too. If Carlos gets the giggles, I am likely to get the giggles. When the birds sing outside my window in the morning, my heart lifts up. A woman humming at the salad bar puts a song in my head and hours later I am whistling the same tune.
So today I am going to soak up some sun, laugh with my friends, read a book. I can clean my crossbow another day.
Have you experienced permeability this week? Was it positive or negative? What did you do to shake the negative?
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. –Maori Proverb
Today is the day that it all takes a turn for the better. Yesterday was the March equinox, the day that light and dark are equal, but from here until the solstice, every day gets longer and brighter. Ahhhhhhhh. Lightness.
We had rain a few days ago and I swear I looked out the window today and the greening switch had been flipped in the backyard. I can hear it buzzing. Our front yard is ringing with the daffodils we tucked away in October. As we were pulling into the garage, Vivi delighted at the sight of the neighbor’s apple tree in full bloom as if she had never seen it before. Two days ago it was bare and now it is a cloud of hooray. Soon, the Yoshino cherry trees will bloom. Their light pink froth makes the soft movement of the air visible again. I remember that every space around me and inside me is filled with boisterous molecules. I feel like I can breathe again…even if it ends up in sneezing.
I’ve been humming “Here Comes the Sun” for weeks now. I love that “the quiet Beatle” wrote that lovely, simple song. Last week while we were waiting on an over-priced chicken finger lunch, Vivi pointed out the picture of the Beatles from the Abbey Road cover from the mural in a TGIFridays. She asked what those men were doing and that led to a discussion of who they were and what they were each famous for. Then she asked if they were still alive and I had to break the news about John and George. George lived a long and peaceful life but his body stopped working. What about the one in front? Well that’s John. He died when a bad man shot him with a gun. Why did the man do that? I don’t know.
I hated to leave it on that note because we had been having such a good talk. I said, “Hey, do you 
remember that tree in Washington DC that we tied wishes to?” She did. “John’s wife came up with that idea.” I scrolled through the pictures on my phone and showed Vivi the wish she had drawn onto a white paper tag then tied to the bare branch of that tree at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. She had drawn a cat. That was her wish–a cat.
On my wish, I wrote my favorite quote about gratitude: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.” I think “yes” is my favorite word, and that word brings us back to what John loved about Yoko–her yes.
In a 1971 Rolling Stone interview with Jann Wenner, John told the story this way:
LENNON: I’m sure I’ve told you this many times. How did I meet Yoko? John Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithful, had an art gallery in London called Indica and I’d been going around to galleries a bit on my off days in between records. I got the word that this amazing woman was putting on a show next week and there was going to be something about people in bags, in black bags, and it was going to be a bit of a happening and all that. So I went down to a preview of the show. I got there the night before it opened. I went in – she didn’t know who I was or anything – I was wandering around, there was a couple of artsy type students that had been helping lying around there in the gallery, and I was looking at it and I was astounded. There was a piece which really decided me for-or-against the artist, a ladder which led to a painting which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a blank canvas with a chain with a spy glass hanging on the end of it. This was near the door when you went in. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says “yes”.
So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say “no” or “fuck you” or something, it said “yes.”
I peeked at some of the other wishes around ours and the one that will stay with me for many years was from a little boy. It said, “If David asks Mom to marry him, please let her say yes.”
Vivi and I visited the wish tree in the dead of winter, when the pavement around it was slippery with ice and the wind tossed the white wishes until their strings were tangled and knotted. Tying a paper wish to a tree is a kind of offering, returning the paper to its source. Despite the darkness of winter, each simple white wish sprouted from the bare limbs like a bloom.
Wishes are hope. Wishes allow us to believe in yes.
I think NOW is the time of year for resolutions. This is the time of newness and growing and coming back to life. The Zoroastrians are celebrating Nowruz with fire and green grass. The Christians mark Easter. The pagans thank Ostara, the Germanic goddess of the dawn for bringing light into the darkness.
Turn your face to the sun today. Hum a few bars of George’s song. Say yes.
Pure T Gems–the girls and the stones that we found.
We ran to Chattanooga this weekend to try to rescue what was left of Spring Break from the clutches of BlarghFest ’13. Today, atop Lookout Mountain, I found that opportunity to do a kindness for a stranger in memory of Richard.
Ruby Falls was the big destination for today–we’re kinda cave geeks in this family. After the journey into the depths of the cave to see the majesty of an underground waterfall (totally worth the hike and the price), we took the kids up to the rooftop play area to get some wiggles out before the drive home. Vivi ran straight for the play ground with Carlos toddling right behind. He stalled out at the staircase and just as I had scooped him up, a young girl came barreling down the steps and ran into us. She apologized and I told her we were fine. Then she stood up really straight and added, “Be cautious at the top of the steps–it’s slippery.” Her demeanor and sincerity impressed me. Then I noticed her bright yellow Girl Scout t-shirt. No wonder!
I hovered over the kids for a while then sat down in the gemstone panning area to enjoy the cool breeze and the burble of the dirty water sloshing through the troughs. The same girl appeared again with two of her friends. They were searching the wire trays for chips of stone that other people had left behind. Her friends lost interest and wandered off, but she found delight in the smallest chips of quartz and calcite. I was sitting near the gemstone identification poster, so our paths crossed again. She asked my opinion on a couple of discoveries so we talked rocks for a while. She told me her grandfather sometimes finds arrowheads on the farm. Except she said, “air-a-heads.”
Her troop was from Forsyth, Georgia. They had driven six hours to get to Chattanooga. Then she totally put me under her spell when she said, “Really! It’s the TRIP OF A LIFETIME!” A gleeful traveler, nine years old! A girl finding beauty in things that others discarded as “not pretty enough.” Her fist was getting full with all the lovely chips of treasure that she had found on her trip of a lifetime. I told her they had bags inside to hold the stones but she looked skeptical when I said “gift shop,” as if she had already been told that it was off limits. We parted ways again.
Vivi asked if we could search for stones. I went into the gift shop and bought the $10 bag of dirt and got 3 little “treasure” bags for the discoveries. When we were getting set up, the Girl Scout was still searching for chips but stopped to listen to me as I showed Vivi how to wash away the dirt and uncover the gemstones. And that’s when I felt Richard tap me on the shoulder. I invited the girl to join us and for five minutes–until the dirt ran out–the three of us ooohed and aaaahed over the riches we discovered. I gave her a treasure bag for her chips and for the stones that she had found. She said, “Thank you–that was really nice,” and I answered “My pleasure–I think Girl Scouts are cool.”
HONK IF YOU LOVE GEESES!
All week, I’ve had that ominous feeling that I need to be somewhere, doing something, achieving, excelling, exceeding, exciting…and I’m not. The rush of the river, the crazy dreams, the ennui for college. BLARGH!!!
The voice in my head (singular!) is telling me that I need to be DOING GREAT THINGS but the voice that comes out of my kid tells me that I need to be finding some oyster crackers for snack and hey this milk smells funny. The voice in my heart shouts “SOAR!” but the voice in my checkbook says, “Get back to work, slack ass!”
Maybe this is what animals feel when it’s time to migrate. Whether it’s the length of the daylight or smells on the wind or the variance of the magnetic fields of the earth, something tells that bird that it’s time to GO. Something also tells that bird to STOP. That they have found a safe place, they will be warm for the winter, there will be enough food for everyone. Stop your honking and RELAX, forcrissakes.
When I get like this, I read Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” out loud to myself until I can hear the world “announcing my place in the family of things.” Read this out loud to yourself today, even if it’s mumbled under your breath behind a cubicle wall.
Wild Geese
~ Mary Oliver ~
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Our seasons have seemed so muddled up for the last few months. It’s 65 today but supposed to snow this weekend. This week it’s been rainy rainy rainy. I’m yearning for a pure spring day.
Bluebirds have had a special place in my life since March 5, 2005. That’s the day Richard and I got married under a white tent in our backyard, down by the river. During our vows, a little bluebird perched on the fence behind us and listened in. Our small band of family and friends saw him, but neither of us did because we were looking at each other. When we talked about it afterwards, most of us there marveled that we had never seen one before. And I still hadn’t.
The bluebird made another appearance at the reception, resting on the bare wisteria bush, while we were making toasts. Again, I missed him. We were laughing so hard in that moment because my 102 yr old grandfather downed three glasses of champagne before the first toast could get started! He couldn’t hear what was going on and just assumed my brother was standing at his elbow refilling his glass to be hospitable. Strange to think that Pop outlived Richard. He made it another year and Richard made it 11 more days.
The next day, we were back to the routine of transfusions and infusions and confusions. I still hadn’t seen a bluebird, but I believed in the magic of it. I knew that we had been visited by something truly special and rare.
I did see the bluebird a few months later. Richard’s parents had come down to do some paperwork on the estate. We were seated at the dining room table sorting through the piles of bills and payments. It’s like swimming through molasses, that kind of work during that kind of grief. I was feeling overwhelmed and far too young to be in that moment when I looked out the window at the very instant that the bluest flash I’d ever seen flitted past and landed on the dogwood tree. He was real! He was there! It was just the sign I had ached for.
The path of grief is not a straight line. You don’t start off in the deepest slough then climb up each step to get back to peaceful. Grief moves forward, but in a looping line. You’re going along, making progress then you hit a loop and your stomach lurches and everything is flipped upside down and you land right back where you were a few weeks or months ago. Eventually, the loops get smaller and spread farther apart, but they’re still there to…well, to throw you for a loop.
That’s how I found myself in despair one late summer day. I was hollow, made of smoke so thin that I might fly apart at any loud sound or sudden move. It had been months. I was back at work. I was going to the grocery store and to the movies. I was rattling around in our big house with my dogs and our cats. I was living and it hurt. I stepped outside one day, looked up at the sky and whispered, “I could really use a bluebird.”
The next evening, I let the dogs out on the deck and what do you know, there sat a blue bird. A bedraggled looking blue parakeet clutched the back of the patio chair. I blinked pretty hard, a couple of times. I walked back inside and watched it through the window. Still there. I locked the cats in the bedroom. When I approached the parakeet, it jumped right into my palm. I cupped
him gently between my hands and took him to the bathroom where he would be safe.
My dad is a veterinarian, so I called him for advice. “Do I need to put up signs around the neighborhood to see if someone is missing a parakeet?” He chuckled and said, “Nooooo. Somebody’s mama got tired of cleaning the cage and left the window open. Just go get you a cage and enjoy your new parakeet.” I asked him what he could tell me about parakeets and he said, “Does it have a colored strip over its beak? If it’s colored, that means it’s a male. Or a female. Hell, I don’t remember.”
I bought a little cage and he made himself at home in the bathroom. Every evening, I’d lock myself in there with him (with 3 cats scratching at the door) and let him fly around for a while. He liked being held and would perch on my shoulder so we could look in the mirror. He sang whenever the water ran or the toilet flushed. I could tell if people washed their hands because the little bird would sing longer!
The moral of this story: accept the gifts that come your way, even if they aren’t EXACTLY what you requested. I asked for a bluebird but I got a blue bird. I named my little friend Tuesday to remind myself that miracles happen even on the most ordinary day of the week.