Wordless

I would not label this state that I am in as "speechless" because if you really asked, I could talk your ear off about something or other. Simply put, I am wordless to describe what has been going on in my life and in my days and in my head. There are periods in my life when I am afraid to write about something out of fear of changing it. Ultimately this is what happens to the poet; his poetry is unraveled by the failure of words to describe what is observed.

Perhaps this is why I tried my hand at science for so many years. The idea of pure observation and quantifying this observation was exciting. The joke was on me as it has been on the scientist for years. Numbers fail. Observation and quantification fail. Logic ALWAYS fails, and I will argue that point with words and numbers until I die of breathlessness. Ultimately the scientist finds herself out of the lab and at her desk hand waving with the same tool as the poet: words.

The number of blog posts rolling around in my head are driving me insane: I would like to write about celebrating my parents' 60th birthday on a cruise ship. I would like to describe my dear friend who has gone through loss and health problems, and her mental and physical recovery. I need to describe the bravery of another friend who has stage 4 breast cancer and cannot catch a break in the physical realm, but somehow found the time to read this blog and let me know that she loved it. I would like post some advice to my newly engaged best friend. I would like to post some advice to a friend not far from giving birth to her first child. I would like to write another letter to my child, because she fills me with the kind of anguishing love that takes over my whole existence. I want to write about a country that is shaking itself free of the evils of torture and automatic weapons. I want to write about how fear of change, even if it means turning away from these evils, is guiding the tongues and hands of so many people.

Right now, I am humbled by the failure of words to describe these events that have me swimming or wading on my knees through my days. The truth is, no matter what form you take, poet or scientist, the key is to not miss a moment. If you are watching close enough, the words eventually gather at your feet.

Getting Started

I just finished mopping up a pool of tears after rereading an excerpt from Patti Digh's book Life is a Verb entitled, Just Help Them Get Started. On the surface it is about her struggle to realize that her toddler daughter is giving up her afternoon nap. It seems at first that her daughter is wailing and screaming and scratching at things in protest just to hurt her mother. I have a toddler. I can relate.

In a way that only Patti Digh can open our eyes, she turns the tale around by realizing that she was ignoring the fear of her daughter, a lack of the ability to get to sleep at that time of day, a fear of being left alone in the room to try and try and try to sleep in the boundless dark. As she is storming out of the child's room, she finally hears her words through the screaming, "Just help me get started!" This is kid-speak for "stay with me, I can't figure out how to do this myself." I am an insomniac. I can relate.

In a follow-up challenge to this story, Patti encourages us to examine our own hall of fears. The ones that make us stop listening to the cries of fear from others that are so often disguised as hurtful actions. I hurt people around me when I am fearful. I can relate.

My big, glaring fear is loneliness. This is almost a joke because I am not a people-person at all. As a stay at home/work at home mother, I am debilitated by isolation when it hits me that I have not spoken to an adult in many hours or when I have not accessed a spiritual outlet such as hospice or church. This fear can often make me seem like I resent the people closest to me, the ones who live with me. My husband and my daughter...not the cats--I honestly do resent the cats most of the time.

Yesterday my husband's company decided it was time for him to move to Michigan, with or without me, whether or not our house has sold. Because we are not making the type of money to carry two mortgages, this will leave me ALONE during the week in an old house in Cleveland, with a toddler that I love but is prone to drive me insane and two cats that I resent. He will rent a small apartment in Michigan.

To summarize with an understatement: I am afraid.

My husband is super-man. He puts my needs first. He puts our daughter before all of that. He notices when I am too exhausted to bathe our daughter and get her in her PJs. He notices when I need a break and gives me the day off. Basically, the way I live my life is because I have him in it most every day.

Now who will I be without that? I will examine this fear. For now, I am forgiving myself for being stuck in the stage that has me clawing and screaming, "Help me get started!"

SAD

Oh, it is time to admit that this season has control over me. Deep winter envelops every part of me that I like and freezes it over. It hurts to walk outside, it hurts to get out of bed, it hurts to fall asleep, and it hurts to crack a smile. Cleveland is especially brutal because we see the sun this time of year about once every 30 days. We are at the point where the icicles spend the day weeping as the thermometer approaches 30 degrees, but freeze into rigid points by 4 pm, when the temperature dips back into the teens. Or as they are predicting this week--below zero.

The worst part is, my best friend named guilt seeps into every crack of my frozen self. I know there is no tragedy in my life. I know I am not going to starve in the next week. I know I can control the thermostat in my house. I know I can walk 2 miles down the main road near my house and stumble over someone who will surely freeze to death tonight--and that person is not someone I know. So I feel horrible AND guilty for feeling horrible.

In a month I will start flipping through the phone book for a shrink. Or light therapy. Or I will spend a week on a diet of chocolate cake.
I am old enough to know that spring always comes.

Christmas Eve, 2008, Shlubby Style

I would like to note some progress on my part here. This time of year, it is so easy to fall into the traps of societal craze, and I just don't do it. Every year I get better and better. I wrap less, want less, bake less, decorate less, and therefore stress less. I have no expectations about what Christmas should be, I just let it be, and each Christmas that passes transcends the magical.

This is because I am watching and not doing.

While there may be people in my life that feel they received something small from me when they expected something bigger--a gift, a greeting, or glitter pouring out of every orifice on my body--I hope they notice that not getting "caught up" allows me the space I need to give what I want to give: the time to be the ear on the other end of the phone and not the voice, the Mom who says, sure, let's read that book for the fifth time today, the person who stops to listen what God is saying and not the advertising industry.

After closing this post, I am going to drink strong coffee and sloppily wrap some gifts. When my daughter wakes, we will eat the last piece of waxy chocolate from her 49 cent Advent Calendar. I will turn on the Christmas lights that are so ill placed they look like they should decorate a frat house. Then I will think and sing and dance and eat with my family, because today we celebrate abundance of spirit. This abundance will be just as exciting in August as it is today, and next year, if we choose, it will still fit.

Dear Sophia,

I could write this whole letter about how yesterday, I left you for one minute to grab something from upstairs, an act that I totally thought was pretty okay, seeing that I birthed you over 2.5 years ago. Then your father, of course, walked into the room and saw that you were getting crafty with the scissors I was using for Christmas cards. My sharpest scissors. It is not as if you were cutting your plump, tiny fingers off...you were just making fringe out of the Christmas Eve mass schedule. Of course, my first thought was to feel like a negligent, dangerous parent, but then I thought no, no she knows what she is doing. She is making fringe on that paper so I can no longer read it because if so help her God she has to wear another scratchy dress and a pair of droopy tights this winter...
Nice try babe. We are going on a 7 night cruise next month and I have purchased scratchy dresses for every day. I may make you sleep in them. Oh, and Christmas mass? Droopiest tights ever.

You see? I am learning to handle you with such grace!

I ran a marathon a week ago today. What got me across the finish line was thinking that I had you at home and I missed you. I know if I never made it, had croaked at mile 2, you would assume that you would have Daddy all to yourself to build you one big fort your entire life and cook you bacon for every meal. Well, I made it and there are once again big tubs of salad in the fridge.

Lucky you, lucky me. Let me tell you something about luck. That marathon showed me how much of that day was luck for me. Yes, I had to do the 4 months of work that prepared my body for five hours of running. The rest was pure luck. I was born in a country where events like marathons that contain over 10,000 people eager to inflict torture on themselves happen every weekend. Luck. We are not distracted by hunting our food for survival or dodging bombs. Luck. I have not been in an accident that has left me wheelchair bound, like so many of the spectators that looked me in the eye and said, "Keep going, great job." Luck. My right hamstring did not snap at mile 9, as it did for a man who was screaming behind me and rolling around on the ground. Luck. The marathon course took us through some pretty destitute areas surrounding Las Vegas, and I grew up differently than the children who were hanging from the walls around their homes watching us with faces that plainly wondered if they would ever be in a position to do something like a marathon. By position I mean rich and educated and under stimulated enough to even think about running a race. Luck.

I hope at my age, you have as much luck, and I hope even harder that you are aware enough to notice. If you do not notice, you will not feel it, it is as simple as that. I will do my part. When we watch a sunrise together, I will talk about this kind of luck. I will even talk about it while searching for the good in a crisis.

Seeing how you react to Christmas lights, sparkly ribbons and unexpected gifts--you make a sound that no animal or soap opera actress can duplicate, like you are replacing breath with pure glee--I am sure you know a thing or two about abundance and gratitude.

Love,
Mom

26.2

As I am writing this my hands are clammy. I am having a hard time taking a breath as I pour my first cup of coffee down my throat. This is because my marathon in Las Vegas is this Sunday, and today I leave with my sister-in-law for that sunny city. I can't decide if my nervousness now is because of the travel, leaving my daughter for the weekend or the running.

This is how I center myself: I have trained. This body of mine has 26.2 miles to give. Even if I sprain my ankle at the starting line and cannot continue, the fact remains that I could finish even if I never start.

26.2 is in me.

Once again, my pre-race-courage-giving poem:

ATHLETE GROWING OLD

By Grace Butcher

The caution is creeping in:

the step is hesitant

from years of pain;

a soft grunt bends the body over,

and straightens it.

The skin loosens; everything moves

nearer the ground.

To overcome the softening,

the yearning toward warmth,

she exercises,

makes her muscles hard,

runs in the snow,

asks herself when she is afraid,

“What would you do now if

you were not afraid?”

She listens for the answer

and tries to be

like that person who speaks,

who lives just outside

all her boundaries

and constantly calls her

to come over, come over.

Happy Birthday, Rainer Maria Rilke

Sorry Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...but I kinda pretend that this guy was the one who knew how to sum it all up best.

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."

German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke was born in 1875.