And when we die we say we'll catch some blackbird's wing
and we will fly away together
come some sweet Bluebonnet spring.
~Nanci Griffith
So I've done nothing for the past month but read page after page of women writing about their gardens in colonial Australia and it is starting to get to my head. Despite the fact that all these things make me itch and swell and drip, I adore flowers and trees and all manner of green things. I really think that God knew what she was doing when she plopped me down in my place in the world, but I think that I was cheated out of a functional set of sinuses.
It's that time of year in South Carolina when daffodils start peeking out of the ground and the buds on the trees get red and swollen causing a the bare branches to have a pinkish tint from a distance. My birthday at the end of February is usually winter's last stand. Spring tends to be short in the south, turning into green (or brown depending on the year) fairly quickly. As much as I love the south in the springtime, it doesn't really have the potency of spring in the north. I remember this from my time in New York, fighting back tears to see clusters of crocus in the corner of my yard and little white flowers bursting out on the cherry trees in mid-April. I remember the horrible frustration of March (and to some extent April), which is an undeniably spring month in South Carolina and are most definitely not in New York (or, I fear, Chicago). But then, when the wait was over, you could feel the joy in the air as people chucked their gloves and mittens and sprawled out on the lawns.
Until recently, I'd never thought about how Lent usually coincides with March here. In SC, people get all decked out in their pastels and while sandals and lace, because Spring is in full bloom and the temperature is nearly always in the 70s every day by then. The anticipation is gone. But here, by early April, the world is only just starting to thaw out. After months of cold and gray, the world has become wet and fragrant and bright again. Life becomes possible again. How appropriate.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
As usual...
good intentions only get you so far. If I recall correctly, I did say that I would write a little every day, not "blog" a little every day. I have certainly been writing...blogging, not so much.
I pulled my first "all nighter" since writing my senior project at Bard four years ago. I don't do well without sleep. I realize that none of us do well without sleep, but I've always been that way, even as a kid. I get nauseous and dizzy and panicky when I don't sleep. And I tend to cry a lot. I guess I just never grew out of the toddler stage. I don't need uninterrupted sleep, but altogether, I need about 7 or 8 hours to remain functional. I had to finish my draft of my seminar paper and send it out by 7 am. I had been reading/writing nonstop for a solid ten days, making up for all the procrastination I've done over this quarter. I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing the Australian garden (better than some things, but it does get old after a while). I only started writing on Friday, and by this morning I had 50 or so pages in a reasonable state. I do write rather quickly, but getting to the point where I feel equipped to write is so difficult. I still have a stack of 19th century settler narratives awaiting my attention in Google Books (the 19th century researcher's absolute best friend), and yet you have to punch yourself in the face and some point and stop reading and stop writing. I just never want to let go of what I might be missing. And because of this personal flaw, I tend to put myself in dangerously last-minute situations. ANd lose a lot of sleep.
Although, there is something to say about being able to watch the sun come up. I'm an old granny, so I'm never out until 5 am partying, so there are very few times when I see twilight. I used to see amazing sunrises on my hour-long commute to W-O High (and sunsets, come to think of it, on the way back), but never the early hours of dawn. In fact, I associate dawn with the road trips of my childhood, the groggy-eyed trek from the house to the car into the cold, wet, silent morning. Tired excitement. And this morning, I heard something truly beautiful, the chirping of spring birds on my porch. They reminded me of home. I know there are birds in every place, but I just have this really visceral memory of waking up in the mornings, the sun pouring in through my window which faced our backyard. There was a wisteria growing right by the window and the birds would just hang out there and twitter away. I remember, even as a preoccupied adolescent, soaking in that sound and that light and knowing that it didn't get much better than that.
And then I began to think about my home and how I don't know if I'll ever not be a little homesick for my patch of dirt in Liberty, South Carolina. I'm writing right now about the domestic outdoor spaces of colonial australia, primarily the garden, and about how people built palaces of memory upon these spaces in attempt to reconcile themselves with an alien landscape far away from their families. And as the birds made me yearn for home, I realized that this kind of attachment to place is not always a given. I've lived in the same house on the same property for my entire life. That dirt is my home. Those trees are my home. The smell of our house and the smells outside are mine. I know our yard like the back of my hand. I know where the old fire pit used to be. I know where the peach trees were. I know the exact spot where my mother once chopped up a pregnant copperhead. I know where my sister and I reenacted Bridge to Terabithia and where we set up a veterinarian clinic for our imaginary injured critters. I know where we buried our dogs. My body knows exactly how long it takes to travel the gravel drive to the house.
I know that when I get out of the car after coming home from wherever it is that I've been something just feels right. I can rest easy there. That is my place. The country of my skull.
I pulled my first "all nighter" since writing my senior project at Bard four years ago. I don't do well without sleep. I realize that none of us do well without sleep, but I've always been that way, even as a kid. I get nauseous and dizzy and panicky when I don't sleep. And I tend to cry a lot. I guess I just never grew out of the toddler stage. I don't need uninterrupted sleep, but altogether, I need about 7 or 8 hours to remain functional. I had to finish my draft of my seminar paper and send it out by 7 am. I had been reading/writing nonstop for a solid ten days, making up for all the procrastination I've done over this quarter. I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing the Australian garden (better than some things, but it does get old after a while). I only started writing on Friday, and by this morning I had 50 or so pages in a reasonable state. I do write rather quickly, but getting to the point where I feel equipped to write is so difficult. I still have a stack of 19th century settler narratives awaiting my attention in Google Books (the 19th century researcher's absolute best friend), and yet you have to punch yourself in the face and some point and stop reading and stop writing. I just never want to let go of what I might be missing. And because of this personal flaw, I tend to put myself in dangerously last-minute situations. ANd lose a lot of sleep.
Although, there is something to say about being able to watch the sun come up. I'm an old granny, so I'm never out until 5 am partying, so there are very few times when I see twilight. I used to see amazing sunrises on my hour-long commute to W-O High (and sunsets, come to think of it, on the way back), but never the early hours of dawn. In fact, I associate dawn with the road trips of my childhood, the groggy-eyed trek from the house to the car into the cold, wet, silent morning. Tired excitement. And this morning, I heard something truly beautiful, the chirping of spring birds on my porch. They reminded me of home. I know there are birds in every place, but I just have this really visceral memory of waking up in the mornings, the sun pouring in through my window which faced our backyard. There was a wisteria growing right by the window and the birds would just hang out there and twitter away. I remember, even as a preoccupied adolescent, soaking in that sound and that light and knowing that it didn't get much better than that.
And then I began to think about my home and how I don't know if I'll ever not be a little homesick for my patch of dirt in Liberty, South Carolina. I'm writing right now about the domestic outdoor spaces of colonial australia, primarily the garden, and about how people built palaces of memory upon these spaces in attempt to reconcile themselves with an alien landscape far away from their families. And as the birds made me yearn for home, I realized that this kind of attachment to place is not always a given. I've lived in the same house on the same property for my entire life. That dirt is my home. Those trees are my home. The smell of our house and the smells outside are mine. I know our yard like the back of my hand. I know where the old fire pit used to be. I know where the peach trees were. I know the exact spot where my mother once chopped up a pregnant copperhead. I know where my sister and I reenacted Bridge to Terabithia and where we set up a veterinarian clinic for our imaginary injured critters. I know where we buried our dogs. My body knows exactly how long it takes to travel the gravel drive to the house.
I know that when I get out of the car after coming home from wherever it is that I've been something just feels right. I can rest easy there. That is my place. The country of my skull.
Monday, March 01, 2010
The Halcyon Days of Hormones
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." ~Gail Godwin
Listen to me, children. If a teacher ever tells you that they don't have favorites, they are lying. We may not "pick" favorites, but there are some kids that will just weasel their way into our hearts, and you might be surprised to learn that it isn't just the smart, polite, helpful kids (thought this is a good start) but some of the troubled, smart-ass, belligerent ones too. But we have favorites, whether we want to or not.
I suppose that it is human nature to want whatever it is that we don't have. My last year teaching, I wanted so bad to be back in school, to continue this journey, to postpone my adulthood, to bury myself in my own bizarre interests. There I was finally getting better at teaching, and I was yearning for the outside, to shrug off that responsibility. And now I'm here, indulging in this wild world of academia, and I miss my kids. I won't go so far as to say that I miss the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons (if any of my teacher friends are reading this, you know exactly why), but the inclination is there. Even the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons, crazy as they made me, won me over on some strange level. They may have made me pull my hair out and drive home crying my eyes out, but I loved them. I wanted better of them, and better for them.
And then on the opposite end, we have my sweet (if hyper) Drama kids who made my life a little bit easier every day with their eagerness and silliness and angst. What a strange little lovely dance we all had. And we have all those in between. The quiet ones, the distracted ones, the stubborn ones, the indifferent ones, the giggly ones, the smelly ones, the loud ones, the timid ones, the mean ones, the gentle ones.
But I had favorites, no doubt about it.
There was Esaw (not his real name, but it was a similar unintentional misspelling of a biblical names) who couldn't read or write a coherent sentence if his life depended on it. He was a volunteer fire fighter and was sweet as he could be as long as you didn't ask him to read anything outloud. He would have chewed off his right arm if I had asked him too, but I knew better than to ask him to read anything. One day he brought a wounded bird to school with him, trying to nurse it back to health. This is a kid who had shot and ate just about every critter in Oconee County, but he was just fretting over this little bird. He left it in my classroom while he went to lunch, and told me emphatically,"If anybody touches that bird, you just tell me and a will whoop 'em good." The bird died during third period, and he came up to me as I was reading out loud from The Bean Trees, interrupted me and said: "Ma'am, my bird done died. Can I go outside and bury it." And God bless him, he did.
There are so many others. I miss the adventure of teaching. I miss the small, rare successes. I miss the exasperation. I miss looking into the turbulent faces of adolescence. Weird, huh?
Listen to me, children. If a teacher ever tells you that they don't have favorites, they are lying. We may not "pick" favorites, but there are some kids that will just weasel their way into our hearts, and you might be surprised to learn that it isn't just the smart, polite, helpful kids (thought this is a good start) but some of the troubled, smart-ass, belligerent ones too. But we have favorites, whether we want to or not.
I suppose that it is human nature to want whatever it is that we don't have. My last year teaching, I wanted so bad to be back in school, to continue this journey, to postpone my adulthood, to bury myself in my own bizarre interests. There I was finally getting better at teaching, and I was yearning for the outside, to shrug off that responsibility. And now I'm here, indulging in this wild world of academia, and I miss my kids. I won't go so far as to say that I miss the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons (if any of my teacher friends are reading this, you know exactly why), but the inclination is there. Even the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons, crazy as they made me, won me over on some strange level. They may have made me pull my hair out and drive home crying my eyes out, but I loved them. I wanted better of them, and better for them.
And then on the opposite end, we have my sweet (if hyper) Drama kids who made my life a little bit easier every day with their eagerness and silliness and angst. What a strange little lovely dance we all had. And we have all those in between. The quiet ones, the distracted ones, the stubborn ones, the indifferent ones, the giggly ones, the smelly ones, the loud ones, the timid ones, the mean ones, the gentle ones.
But I had favorites, no doubt about it.
There was Esaw (not his real name, but it was a similar unintentional misspelling of a biblical names) who couldn't read or write a coherent sentence if his life depended on it. He was a volunteer fire fighter and was sweet as he could be as long as you didn't ask him to read anything outloud. He would have chewed off his right arm if I had asked him too, but I knew better than to ask him to read anything. One day he brought a wounded bird to school with him, trying to nurse it back to health. This is a kid who had shot and ate just about every critter in Oconee County, but he was just fretting over this little bird. He left it in my classroom while he went to lunch, and told me emphatically,"If anybody touches that bird, you just tell me and a will whoop 'em good." The bird died during third period, and he came up to me as I was reading out loud from The Bean Trees, interrupted me and said: "Ma'am, my bird done died. Can I go outside and bury it." And God bless him, he did.
There are so many others. I miss the adventure of teaching. I miss the small, rare successes. I miss the exasperation. I miss looking into the turbulent faces of adolescence. Weird, huh?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
How can I keep from singing?
"When my feeble life is over/ time for me will be no more/ guide me gently, safely over/ to thy kingdom's shore, to thy shore."
So I have totally legitimate excuses for not writing the past two days, both of them having to do with me actually having a miniscule social life. I refuse to drunk blog (applying to my birthday), or blog when I am so tired I can't see straight (applying to last night). So I absolve myself of all lenten slackness.
I recorded another gospel hymn last week. We sang it in the Rise Up Singing book at the monastery and I just felt so homesick and yearning for the soulful music that takes me back on the wings of a snow white dove ("pure sweet love") to the South. I think that along with "Softly and Tenderly" and "In the Garden" and "Near (In?) The Cross," that "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" is at the top level of my hymnal wedding cake tower. Except for maybe the song they sing at the beginning of Doris's church led by a toothless deacon who is probably near to a hundred if he's a day. Something to the effect of "Jesus is alright with me" and then at some point "It's alright, I can't hide/fight it, but it's alright."
But I was just thinking today how powerful this particular image is to me, this crossing over the river stuff. Rest beyond the river. Crossing to the other side. I got no boat so I'll be good and muddy when I get to the other side. My home is over jordan. They'll be no graves on that bright shore. Wade in the water. We shall meet on that beautiful shore. Of Death's cold wave I will not flee, since God through Jordan leadeth me. Maybe it is just growing up Southern Baptist that makes my soul so susceptible to river/water/washing imagery and this preoccupation with "the other side." Nevertheless, I love these hymns. They are hymns of comfort for the weary and they move the deep river inside me.
So I have totally legitimate excuses for not writing the past two days, both of them having to do with me actually having a miniscule social life. I refuse to drunk blog (applying to my birthday), or blog when I am so tired I can't see straight (applying to last night). So I absolve myself of all lenten slackness.
I recorded another gospel hymn last week. We sang it in the Rise Up Singing book at the monastery and I just felt so homesick and yearning for the soulful music that takes me back on the wings of a snow white dove ("pure sweet love") to the South. I think that along with "Softly and Tenderly" and "In the Garden" and "Near (In?) The Cross," that "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" is at the top level of my hymnal wedding cake tower. Except for maybe the song they sing at the beginning of Doris's church led by a toothless deacon who is probably near to a hundred if he's a day. Something to the effect of "Jesus is alright with me" and then at some point "It's alright, I can't hide/fight it, but it's alright."
But I was just thinking today how powerful this particular image is to me, this crossing over the river stuff. Rest beyond the river. Crossing to the other side. I got no boat so I'll be good and muddy when I get to the other side. My home is over jordan. They'll be no graves on that bright shore. Wade in the water. We shall meet on that beautiful shore. Of Death's cold wave I will not flee, since God through Jordan leadeth me. Maybe it is just growing up Southern Baptist that makes my soul so susceptible to river/water/washing imagery and this preoccupation with "the other side." Nevertheless, I love these hymns. They are hymns of comfort for the weary and they move the deep river inside me.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Annual Aging Crisis
In the place of my usual aging crisis, I am not going to have one. So there.
Instead, lets look at some of my baby pictures....
Birthday Tiaras and bowl cuts.....
Talking to horses....
Talking to butterflies....
Road Rage....
Tragedy...
Angels Unawares
"I am moved to tenderness by what we cannot bear/ humbled by what we can and do and learn to share." ~Carrie Newcomer
This will have to be a short post as it is now midnight, and my wine glass (such a rare indulgence) is in hand.
I had a hankerin' to hear Carrie Newcomer's Regulars and Refugees as I hadn't heard it in some time and it is such a calming album when one needs relief from overwhelmed-ness or needs a faith-boost in humanity. The former was my issue tonight, not the latter, fortunately. And in the first song, I hear this line...I am moved to tenderness by what we cannot bear. I've been trying to find a way of expressing this feeling for literally an entire year, longer even than that. This intersection of sorrow and joy...that life is both astonishingly beautiful and astoundingly sad.
In losing my grandparents, I didn't know how to handle this emotional hybrid that nearly paralyzed me with its unexpectedness. Never had grief for me been so adulterated with this unexplainable and confusing love and joy. Loss had always been so shocking, so raw, so devastating, nothing like the slow dance of goodbyes that we got with PaPa and Gan-Gan. When we said goodbye to PaPa, there was this moment where I was holding his limp hand, looking at my grandmother's aching heart on her face, the rest of our family gathered around his bed, my mother's hand on my shoulder. And I just started to sob uncontrollably, burying my face in my mother's side to hide from this feeling. It wasn't sorrow, or not exactly. I still don't understand exactly. Here we were watching this man slowly drown, and all I could think was, "I'm the luckiest person in the world!" Because I was there to witness it. Because we were all together in our grief. Because so much had been said and unsaid, done and not done.
And then a few months later, after five years of watching Gan-Gan's mind go, we stood around her in the Hospice House and watched her body go. And a few hours before she died, we crammed in her room (she was a prolific woman with prolific children, so there were a lot of us, not to mention her own siblings) and passed out crudely-made print outs of the world to all our favorite hymns (or really just my favorite hymns, since I was the sap who had made them) and we sang. And we had all four parts and even as we dropped in an out with tears, we sounded so good. The old ones sang and the little ones sang and the rest of us in between. And my grandfather even sang through the cloud of his unimaginable sorrow, though mostly he just cried. And I swear to God, I thought my heart might just burst out of my chest. It was perhaps the most beautiful moment of my life so far.
I am moved to tenderness by what we cannot bear. That explains it.
This will have to be a short post as it is now midnight, and my wine glass (such a rare indulgence) is in hand.
I had a hankerin' to hear Carrie Newcomer's Regulars and Refugees as I hadn't heard it in some time and it is such a calming album when one needs relief from overwhelmed-ness or needs a faith-boost in humanity. The former was my issue tonight, not the latter, fortunately. And in the first song, I hear this line...I am moved to tenderness by what we cannot bear. I've been trying to find a way of expressing this feeling for literally an entire year, longer even than that. This intersection of sorrow and joy...that life is both astonishingly beautiful and astoundingly sad.
In losing my grandparents, I didn't know how to handle this emotional hybrid that nearly paralyzed me with its unexpectedness. Never had grief for me been so adulterated with this unexplainable and confusing love and joy. Loss had always been so shocking, so raw, so devastating, nothing like the slow dance of goodbyes that we got with PaPa and Gan-Gan. When we said goodbye to PaPa, there was this moment where I was holding his limp hand, looking at my grandmother's aching heart on her face, the rest of our family gathered around his bed, my mother's hand on my shoulder. And I just started to sob uncontrollably, burying my face in my mother's side to hide from this feeling. It wasn't sorrow, or not exactly. I still don't understand exactly. Here we were watching this man slowly drown, and all I could think was, "I'm the luckiest person in the world!" Because I was there to witness it. Because we were all together in our grief. Because so much had been said and unsaid, done and not done.
And then a few months later, after five years of watching Gan-Gan's mind go, we stood around her in the Hospice House and watched her body go. And a few hours before she died, we crammed in her room (she was a prolific woman with prolific children, so there were a lot of us, not to mention her own siblings) and passed out crudely-made print outs of the world to all our favorite hymns (or really just my favorite hymns, since I was the sap who had made them) and we sang. And we had all four parts and even as we dropped in an out with tears, we sounded so good. The old ones sang and the little ones sang and the rest of us in between. And my grandfather even sang through the cloud of his unimaginable sorrow, though mostly he just cried. And I swear to God, I thought my heart might just burst out of my chest. It was perhaps the most beautiful moment of my life so far.
I am moved to tenderness by what we cannot bear. That explains it.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Touching Base
Now the thing about having a baby-and I can't be the first person to have noticed this--is that thereafter you have it. ~Jean Kerr
I was just poking around on Facebook and stumbled upon the profile of a former student of mine, a sweet girl, eager to please, who always did her work and liked to read and wanted to get the hell out of Dodge (Dodge in this case being Oconee County, SC). I taught her when she was 15, a sophomore. She had the highest grades in my class. She shouldn't have been in my class really. She would have been better off in an honors class. She was about 5 months pregnant before I figured it out (unsuspecting me...). I volunteered to do her homebound. I really liked her and I wanted to make sure that she had an advocate. Obviously her life would not be the same and school would change its shape in her life, but I really wanted to see her through it.
She went nearly full term and was a real trooper as we plowed through mounds of busy work until the last week. She had a her baby, which was mostly cared for by the grandmother. She looked at me like I was growing bean trees out of my ears when I asked if she was nursing (silly me). I think her mother occasionally let her hold the baby, and when she did, she looked overwhelmed and unsure of herself (as many new mothers do). I, however, took great joy in holding him while she took her Biology tests and made her U.S. History project. We finished up and I left their bewildered home and flew to England where I had my own adventures, free and unencumbered, while this child of a child of a child grew into little person over the summer.
My student returned in the fall looking fabulous. She had probably starved herself into her old jeans and compensated for weariness with impeccably applied mascara and eyeliner. I know this because I ran into her and her mother and the baby in K-mart buying school supplies a few weeks earlier and all party members looked ragged and frustrated. She wasn't in my class anymore, but I kept up with her. Her straight As had turned to Bs and Cs, but she kept her head above water. I let go. I was dealing with my own troubles. And then one morning as I fussed at several of my students for being late to class, I was given the ultimate legitimate excuse: "But Ms. Capps, there was this awesome fight. [Former Student] just beat the sh...("ahem") crap out of [Other Student]!" I couldn't immediately envision such a scenario out of my sweet, reluctant, quiet pupil. As I told my students (in a totally professional way) to mind their own damn business, I knew that it must have been about her baby. My intuition was right. The other girl had said something derogatory about the baby and, being a child herself with typically teenage impulse control, she had flown off the deep end and evidently really hurt the offending girl.
By the end of my second year, I was too preoccupied with my own future to worry too much about hers. Over two years, I taught 300 kids or so. If you kept up with all of them, there would be nothing left of you. But I clicked on her profile today and read that she had another baby around Halloween, which means she would have been pregnant around the time of that fight. Accept this baby was born in a storm. The latest pictures show her little baby at 4 months, still intubated and in hospital. I'm afraid to ask. My stomach hurts thinking about their lives, what the years will bring, what I might have been able to do. Maybe because she was the first student who I thought, with first year teaching hubris, I could really help. I thought that maybe if I showed her enough attention and supported her amidst all the judgement and drama, that she would be able to pick up the pieces of her life and move forward and overcome the odds of so many other teen mothers out there.
In two years I taught seemingly countless teen moms, most of whom were surprisingly enthusiastic about their pregnancies, unlike their adult counterpart. All these girls just want to be loved. They have sex (bad sex, most likely, given the skills of teenage boys) because they think they might be trading the use of their bodies for real love. And, in turn, they have babies that will love them unconditionally. It's what we all want, right...to love and be loved in return.
Monday, February 22, 2010
WhataboutawaterbottleWiddle?
"The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose." ~Garrison Keillor
My favorite movie scene perhaps of all time is in Mary Poppins in the tea party scene at Uncle Albert's where their laughter lifts them to the ceiling.
I love hearing people laugh uncontrollably. I love when laughter becomes contagious. I love when people get the giggles at inappropriate times and try to hide it. I love laughing until I cry and get asthma. I love not being able to stop laughing no matter how hard I try. When I think about laughing (especially the uncontrollable sort), I think a lot about my time at Governor's School.
I remember a particular class my senior year at Governor's School when we were reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and talking about the story of Ceyx (Sigh-Ex) and Alcyone. Our teacher was a loud (and utterly amazing) Northerner who didn't realize that when she said Ceyx, it sounded exactly like a really redneck version of SEX and coming from her it was really hilarious. It sent the entire class into giggles. At first, it struck the funny bones of only a few, and we tried to hide our grins. And then she said it again, and more joined in. She stopped and said, "What?" and we all laughed harder. She shook it off and started talking again, and after the third time realized why "Ceyx" sent us into such a state, but by that time it was too late. She tried unsuccessfully to get us back on track (though she was fighting it as well). Most of us were silently convulsing with laughter, tears streaming down our faces. Someone actually left the room to gather herself. After it should really have been getting old, I tried so hard to stop. I just buried my face in the crook of my elbow and snorted into my sweater. Afterwards, none of us could dare look at anyone else for fear that we would all start up again. That was definitive happiness.
There was also the classic electronic whoopie cushion episode in Jan's class. I forget who owned it, only that Jan confiscated it later on because she was worried that we would take it to the Emrys Poetry reading (and really, I wouldn't have put it past us). Jan was talking to us about sestinas or something (it was definitely our form poetry days) and we kept passing that thing around and pushing the button at every break. "Blah Blah Blah Blah.....PPPppppplllluuubbbb.....Blah Blah Blah.....BBBBPPPppppppttssst....What is that?" By the time she caught on people were literally crippled in hysterical laughter. Jan was such a good sport, though.
Also Governor's School related was the time our writing class went to the classically horrid Emrys Poetry reading where we saw that god-awful slam poet with (I kid you not) a really pronounced lisp. She was probably 45 years old and writing really bad slam poetry about her shoebox of sexual secrets. All twenty of us in the writing department were covering our mouths and holding our noses and biting our lips, desperately trying to keep from laughing. In a classic good-cop, bad-cop moment, George was just grinning his silly old grin which didn't help us at all, and Jan was shooting us ferocious glances that said "If ya'll don't knock it off, I am going to tear you all to pieces all the way back to the dorms." But really.....a slam poet with a lisp talking about her Sheckshual ShoeBocksh of Shecretsh...
I feel like I laughed my way through Governor's School. Maybe that is why I look back and see those years as the happiest of my life. It seems like I was either laughing or crying the whole time and not much in between. And for the most part, the crying was cathartic (and usually in the context of a writing workshop) or at least a joint endeavor.
Come to think about it, I think crying and laughter are pretty much the same thing from physiological standpoint. Think about it. Your diaphragm is doing the same thing. Your breathing is short and forceful. Weird noises emerge from your throat. It hardly matters that one springs from joy and the other sorrow (or sometimes joy). And in either case, your mind has very little control over what the rest of you is up to.
So here's to laughter!
My favorite movie scene perhaps of all time is in Mary Poppins in the tea party scene at Uncle Albert's where their laughter lifts them to the ceiling.
I love hearing people laugh uncontrollably. I love when laughter becomes contagious. I love when people get the giggles at inappropriate times and try to hide it. I love laughing until I cry and get asthma. I love not being able to stop laughing no matter how hard I try. When I think about laughing (especially the uncontrollable sort), I think a lot about my time at Governor's School.
I remember a particular class my senior year at Governor's School when we were reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and talking about the story of Ceyx (Sigh-Ex) and Alcyone. Our teacher was a loud (and utterly amazing) Northerner who didn't realize that when she said Ceyx, it sounded exactly like a really redneck version of SEX and coming from her it was really hilarious. It sent the entire class into giggles. At first, it struck the funny bones of only a few, and we tried to hide our grins. And then she said it again, and more joined in. She stopped and said, "What?" and we all laughed harder. She shook it off and started talking again, and after the third time realized why "Ceyx" sent us into such a state, but by that time it was too late. She tried unsuccessfully to get us back on track (though she was fighting it as well). Most of us were silently convulsing with laughter, tears streaming down our faces. Someone actually left the room to gather herself. After it should really have been getting old, I tried so hard to stop. I just buried my face in the crook of my elbow and snorted into my sweater. Afterwards, none of us could dare look at anyone else for fear that we would all start up again. That was definitive happiness.
There was also the classic electronic whoopie cushion episode in Jan's class. I forget who owned it, only that Jan confiscated it later on because she was worried that we would take it to the Emrys Poetry reading (and really, I wouldn't have put it past us). Jan was talking to us about sestinas or something (it was definitely our form poetry days) and we kept passing that thing around and pushing the button at every break. "Blah Blah Blah Blah.....PPPppppplllluuubbbb.....Blah Blah Blah.....BBBBPPPppppppttssst....What is that?" By the time she caught on people were literally crippled in hysterical laughter. Jan was such a good sport, though.
Also Governor's School related was the time our writing class went to the classically horrid Emrys Poetry reading where we saw that god-awful slam poet with (I kid you not) a really pronounced lisp. She was probably 45 years old and writing really bad slam poetry about her shoebox of sexual secrets. All twenty of us in the writing department were covering our mouths and holding our noses and biting our lips, desperately trying to keep from laughing. In a classic good-cop, bad-cop moment, George was just grinning his silly old grin which didn't help us at all, and Jan was shooting us ferocious glances that said "If ya'll don't knock it off, I am going to tear you all to pieces all the way back to the dorms." But really.....a slam poet with a lisp talking about her Sheckshual ShoeBocksh of Shecretsh...
I feel like I laughed my way through Governor's School. Maybe that is why I look back and see those years as the happiest of my life. It seems like I was either laughing or crying the whole time and not much in between. And for the most part, the crying was cathartic (and usually in the context of a writing workshop) or at least a joint endeavor.
Come to think about it, I think crying and laughter are pretty much the same thing from physiological standpoint. Think about it. Your diaphragm is doing the same thing. Your breathing is short and forceful. Weird noises emerge from your throat. It hardly matters that one springs from joy and the other sorrow (or sometimes joy). And in either case, your mind has very little control over what the rest of you is up to.
So here's to laughter!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
For who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ~1 Corinthians 13:11
I'm having a Sandy Denny kind of night.
Under the pretense of tidying up my bookshelves, I read my old journals from middle/high today. I only ask two things of my friends and family if I was to die suddenly: 1) Please don't let the horrible state of my bedroom taint your memory of me and 2) throw those damn journals out and for God's sake, don't read them. I said so many things that I didn't really mean. I would throw them out myself, except that I get a sort of grim satisfaction from reading them, and they never fail to make me less anxious about getting older. I don't want to be a teenager again. You certainly couldn't pay me a gazillion dollars and get me to go back to middle school. It's a wonder any of us make it out alive. I was so dramatic, so misunderstood, so troubled.
It's not all bad, those journals. It's interesting to look back at my budding self--the fervent political life of my Governor's School years, the yearning to please my teachers, the self-righteous moralism. (Isn't it nice to be 18 and know EVERYTHING?) Amidst the angst and drama and ridiculousness of my interior life in adolescence, there is, at least towards the end, an astonishing confidence that radiates through it all. Looking back, I always think of what a brave little person I was, and yet all I remember is the fear and doubt.
I will be a quarter of a century old on Friday. I think that getting older doesn't bother me as much as it used to now that I have resigned myself to the fact that deep down I will never feel all that different from my ten-year-old self. We carry our child-selves with us forever. There is no real adulthood cut off and distinguished from our childhood. We carry many of the same desires, the same fears, the same strengths, the same insecurities. We never really put away all our childish things. We just learn to articulate them better and to ignore them when needed.
I'm having a Sandy Denny kind of night.
Under the pretense of tidying up my bookshelves, I read my old journals from middle/high today. I only ask two things of my friends and family if I was to die suddenly: 1) Please don't let the horrible state of my bedroom taint your memory of me and 2) throw those damn journals out and for God's sake, don't read them. I said so many things that I didn't really mean. I would throw them out myself, except that I get a sort of grim satisfaction from reading them, and they never fail to make me less anxious about getting older. I don't want to be a teenager again. You certainly couldn't pay me a gazillion dollars and get me to go back to middle school. It's a wonder any of us make it out alive. I was so dramatic, so misunderstood, so troubled.
It's not all bad, those journals. It's interesting to look back at my budding self--the fervent political life of my Governor's School years, the yearning to please my teachers, the self-righteous moralism. (Isn't it nice to be 18 and know EVERYTHING?) Amidst the angst and drama and ridiculousness of my interior life in adolescence, there is, at least towards the end, an astonishing confidence that radiates through it all. Looking back, I always think of what a brave little person I was, and yet all I remember is the fear and doubt.
I will be a quarter of a century old on Friday. I think that getting older doesn't bother me as much as it used to now that I have resigned myself to the fact that deep down I will never feel all that different from my ten-year-old self. We carry our child-selves with us forever. There is no real adulthood cut off and distinguished from our childhood. We carry many of the same desires, the same fears, the same strengths, the same insecurities. We never really put away all our childish things. We just learn to articulate them better and to ignore them when needed.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Pity Party
Black Lung, Black Lung, oh your hand's icy cold,
As you reach for my life and torture my soul.
Cold as that water hole deep in that dark cave,
Where I spent my life's blood diggin' my own grave.
~Hazel Dickens
I don't know how spiritually productive it is to whine (I think not very), but I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm tired of my lungs, and today I woke up with a rather disturbing thought, they are only going to get worse as they get older. I've never smoked a cigarette in my entire life, and yet I have to live like a chain-smoker because I entered the world with a shitty pair of lungs and a nearly-as-shitty set of sinuses. My daily survival depends on some inhaled steroids and bronchodilators and there isn't a day in my life since I was 3 or 4 years old that I have been able to breathe like a normal human being without the aid of chemicals. Don't get me wrong, I'm damn grateful for the chemicals, even if it means I start glowing florescent green in my dotage, but I just wish for one day I didn't have to think about my lungs.
In actuality, it doesn't bother me that much on a daily basis. Asthma just gets incorporated into my "normal." But for once in my life I'd like to be able to get a cold, sneeze and cough and drip and feel icky for a week and then get better. I'd like to be able to drink soup, stay in bed, eat oranges, drink water, think good thoughts, and let my body take over. But instead, my sinuses become impenetrable with infection, my lungs burn and pool with fluid, my every breath becomes a wheeze and I end up hooked up to my nebulizer half the day, jittery from the meds, stomach revolting due to antibiotics, and hacking up all sorts of crap every time I breathe too deeply.
Such is my current state as I wallow in self-pity. This time with a new development, a right ear that doesn't seem to be working properly. And yet, as one of my favorite childhood books once said: "Could be worse." I should be grateful for my miracle drugs and my ability to receive them and to pay for them (at least for now....don't get me started). And I am. I just don't feel very strong today. I'm plum-tuckered out, as we say.
But just so I won't have wasted this whole post on a gigantic whine, here's five blessings:
1) A warm house
2) Nyquil
3) Sweet, sleepy music
4) Understanding ears on the other end of a phone line.
5) New friends
As you reach for my life and torture my soul.
Cold as that water hole deep in that dark cave,
Where I spent my life's blood diggin' my own grave.
~Hazel Dickens
I don't know how spiritually productive it is to whine (I think not very), but I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm tired of my lungs, and today I woke up with a rather disturbing thought, they are only going to get worse as they get older. I've never smoked a cigarette in my entire life, and yet I have to live like a chain-smoker because I entered the world with a shitty pair of lungs and a nearly-as-shitty set of sinuses. My daily survival depends on some inhaled steroids and bronchodilators and there isn't a day in my life since I was 3 or 4 years old that I have been able to breathe like a normal human being without the aid of chemicals. Don't get me wrong, I'm damn grateful for the chemicals, even if it means I start glowing florescent green in my dotage, but I just wish for one day I didn't have to think about my lungs.
In actuality, it doesn't bother me that much on a daily basis. Asthma just gets incorporated into my "normal." But for once in my life I'd like to be able to get a cold, sneeze and cough and drip and feel icky for a week and then get better. I'd like to be able to drink soup, stay in bed, eat oranges, drink water, think good thoughts, and let my body take over. But instead, my sinuses become impenetrable with infection, my lungs burn and pool with fluid, my every breath becomes a wheeze and I end up hooked up to my nebulizer half the day, jittery from the meds, stomach revolting due to antibiotics, and hacking up all sorts of crap every time I breathe too deeply.
Such is my current state as I wallow in self-pity. This time with a new development, a right ear that doesn't seem to be working properly. And yet, as one of my favorite childhood books once said: "Could be worse." I should be grateful for my miracle drugs and my ability to receive them and to pay for them (at least for now....don't get me started). And I am. I just don't feel very strong today. I'm plum-tuckered out, as we say.
But just so I won't have wasted this whole post on a gigantic whine, here's five blessings:
1) A warm house
2) Nyquil
3) Sweet, sleepy music
4) Understanding ears on the other end of a phone line.
5) New friends
Thursday, February 18, 2010
My little chicken
"How long do you wanna be loved? / Is forever enough? Is forever enough?
I had such a nice day with Henry today. It was the right decision for me, even though it hurts sometimes, to find another baby to love. I thought that it might be like pouring salt into a wound that was finally starting to close up and heal, and I won't deny that sometimes I feel sad. But the boundaries of my heart just open up again, and it makes me feel whole, unbroken, strong...and I look forward to the few times a week when it is my job to watch and love a sweet little baby, my chicken.
I love how his little face lights up or spreads into this goofy, shy grin when I walk in the door or when I come to get him after a nap. I love his sleepy red cheeks and glassy eyes ("one of those sweet, sleepy moods that save the human race from extinction). I love his little language of grunts and beeps and twitters that he sings to me. I love his daily tragedies (who knew that the removal of a contraband pencil from a chubby hand could elicit such heart-felt sorrow...). I love the abandon with which he smears his lunch across his face with pure, unadulterated joy. I love his bursts of hysterical laughter brought on by God knows what. I love the way he touches my face, tenderly at first and then more enthusiastically, probing my eye sockets and pulling my earlobes until I have to take his hand and show him how to be "gentle."
I love rocking him to sleep. He always puts his little face in the crook of my neck and twists my shirt in his left hand and gently pats my shoulder with the other. And I sing to him, mostly the old gospel or folk and bluegrass ballads that I know so well. Henry's fool-proof song is "Shady Grove" which I usually end with, as his little body grows soft and warm and heavy and the patting and twisting stops. And beneath him, I also feel so relaxed and sleepy and so wonderfully content. My family calls me the "baby-whisperer" because I've never met a baby or toddler than I couldn't put to sleep, even the most reluctant sleepers. I don't exactly know how I do it. I just do. It is almost like meditation for me. My mind has to be, in that moment, untroubled, nearly blank. I have to focus on the rhythm, the music, the feel of him in my arms. In comparison, Henry is easy, so I don't even have to try.
And for the first time in my experience as a self-proclaimed baby whisperer, I love the transition from arms to crib, the time when the connection is broken. Each time, I lower him down, he smiles, barely awake, just about enough to break your heart, before I release him and watch him curl up like a rolypoly into his lovies. Usually, he hums for a few seconds before falling still. In that moment, I know perfect peace. Sometimes I don't pay attention to that moment. Today I did.
I had such a nice day with Henry today. It was the right decision for me, even though it hurts sometimes, to find another baby to love. I thought that it might be like pouring salt into a wound that was finally starting to close up and heal, and I won't deny that sometimes I feel sad. But the boundaries of my heart just open up again, and it makes me feel whole, unbroken, strong...and I look forward to the few times a week when it is my job to watch and love a sweet little baby, my chicken.
I love how his little face lights up or spreads into this goofy, shy grin when I walk in the door or when I come to get him after a nap. I love his sleepy red cheeks and glassy eyes ("one of those sweet, sleepy moods that save the human race from extinction). I love his little language of grunts and beeps and twitters that he sings to me. I love his daily tragedies (who knew that the removal of a contraband pencil from a chubby hand could elicit such heart-felt sorrow...). I love the abandon with which he smears his lunch across his face with pure, unadulterated joy. I love his bursts of hysterical laughter brought on by God knows what. I love the way he touches my face, tenderly at first and then more enthusiastically, probing my eye sockets and pulling my earlobes until I have to take his hand and show him how to be "gentle."
I love rocking him to sleep. He always puts his little face in the crook of my neck and twists my shirt in his left hand and gently pats my shoulder with the other. And I sing to him, mostly the old gospel or folk and bluegrass ballads that I know so well. Henry's fool-proof song is "Shady Grove" which I usually end with, as his little body grows soft and warm and heavy and the patting and twisting stops. And beneath him, I also feel so relaxed and sleepy and so wonderfully content. My family calls me the "baby-whisperer" because I've never met a baby or toddler than I couldn't put to sleep, even the most reluctant sleepers. I don't exactly know how I do it. I just do. It is almost like meditation for me. My mind has to be, in that moment, untroubled, nearly blank. I have to focus on the rhythm, the music, the feel of him in my arms. In comparison, Henry is easy, so I don't even have to try.
And for the first time in my experience as a self-proclaimed baby whisperer, I love the transition from arms to crib, the time when the connection is broken. Each time, I lower him down, he smiles, barely awake, just about enough to break your heart, before I release him and watch him curl up like a rolypoly into his lovies. Usually, he hums for a few seconds before falling still. In that moment, I know perfect peace. Sometimes I don't pay attention to that moment. Today I did.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Alone we are born, and die alone
As for man, his days are as grass:
as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psalm 103:15-16
For lent, I am going to write a little every day. Even when I am tired and sick and have more pressing matters to attend to. It struck me today that I have not been as reflective as I once was, and I'd like to change that, even for just a short while.
So today is Ash Wednesday, probably the single-most poetic day of the Christian calendar; the day we are marked with a sign of our own mortality and told to remember we are dust and to dust we shall return. And for a moment, with a fingertip tenderly etching this message onto our skin, death seems less scary.
The past year and half has been a season of goodbyes, of watching old loved ones fade away into whatever comes next, of grasping at the air left behind of those that went without warning, of secret griefs and sorrows. This spring I witnessed the last rattling breath of a man who was able to make peace with his family, who knew that he was dying. This summer I gathered with my the people of my blood around the bed of a woman with one foot already firmly rooted in the other side and we sang her soul the rest of the way. Death isn't pretty. It isn't easy. And yet, in some ways, it was beautiful. Oddly enough, it was death that restored my faith that had been lost with other lost things....it made me believe again. Perhaps it was death that taught me how to relinquish control, to become vulnerable again.
I feel like I've spent most of my life fighting for a place in the world, trying to figure out was I "should" be doing. And the older I get, the less certain it seems. And then, on days like today, a voice comes down from above and says "My sweet little idiot, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" (remember that Mary Oliver and God tend to speak with the same voice for me) and I remember, with less anxiety than I would think possible on an ordinary day, that I am dust and to dust I will return.
as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psalm 103:15-16
For lent, I am going to write a little every day. Even when I am tired and sick and have more pressing matters to attend to. It struck me today that I have not been as reflective as I once was, and I'd like to change that, even for just a short while.
So today is Ash Wednesday, probably the single-most poetic day of the Christian calendar; the day we are marked with a sign of our own mortality and told to remember we are dust and to dust we shall return. And for a moment, with a fingertip tenderly etching this message onto our skin, death seems less scary.
The past year and half has been a season of goodbyes, of watching old loved ones fade away into whatever comes next, of grasping at the air left behind of those that went without warning, of secret griefs and sorrows. This spring I witnessed the last rattling breath of a man who was able to make peace with his family, who knew that he was dying. This summer I gathered with my the people of my blood around the bed of a woman with one foot already firmly rooted in the other side and we sang her soul the rest of the way. Death isn't pretty. It isn't easy. And yet, in some ways, it was beautiful. Oddly enough, it was death that restored my faith that had been lost with other lost things....it made me believe again. Perhaps it was death that taught me how to relinquish control, to become vulnerable again.
I feel like I've spent most of my life fighting for a place in the world, trying to figure out was I "should" be doing. And the older I get, the less certain it seems. And then, on days like today, a voice comes down from above and says "My sweet little idiot, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" (remember that Mary Oliver and God tend to speak with the same voice for me) and I remember, with less anxiety than I would think possible on an ordinary day, that I am dust and to dust I will return.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
We'll wake in better light
We are just transients on the earth, some meant to walk through nearly a century and some meant only for a brief warm darkness of the womb, and all those in between. I know that people die every day. My mind knows this, but my heart has this knowledge knocked into it each time death presents his untouchable face in my window. The world lost two good men today. One of them was barely more than a child, younger than me. And the other was, as I remember him, forever a child at heart. I didn't know Andrew, but I stood witness to the celebration of his extraordinary young life as his family and friends said their goodbyes. I cannot imagine their grief.
I've known for less that two hours about Steve's passing, and right now it doesn't feel real. I was so sure that he was going to make it through, that he was going to get a second chance. It seemed so ridiculous that a heart attack could take the likes of Steve Ellis. And yet there is already an article about his death in the Orlando Sentinel, so I guess it has to be true. Steve and my dad have been best friends for ages. He was such a special part of my childhood. I mean, Steve had the "cool factor." He was like a wild rambler who showed up every once in a while and the party seemed to come with him. He loved my dad. He loved my mother. He loved our family.
Steve should have been a Daddy. I think that, more than anything else, is what hurts so much about this, what seems so unfair. It was a long time before I realized that Brandon wasn't his son, because he certainly loved him like one. People are going to be honoring his passion and dedication to the Seminoles, but perhaps his love of children (and of Brandon in particular) was his greatest gift of all.
My heart aches for his family and my family.
I've known for less that two hours about Steve's passing, and right now it doesn't feel real. I was so sure that he was going to make it through, that he was going to get a second chance. It seemed so ridiculous that a heart attack could take the likes of Steve Ellis. And yet there is already an article about his death in the Orlando Sentinel, so I guess it has to be true. Steve and my dad have been best friends for ages. He was such a special part of my childhood. I mean, Steve had the "cool factor." He was like a wild rambler who showed up every once in a while and the party seemed to come with him. He loved my dad. He loved my mother. He loved our family.
Steve should have been a Daddy. I think that, more than anything else, is what hurts so much about this, what seems so unfair. It was a long time before I realized that Brandon wasn't his son, because he certainly loved him like one. People are going to be honoring his passion and dedication to the Seminoles, but perhaps his love of children (and of Brandon in particular) was his greatest gift of all.
My heart aches for his family and my family.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Treasures untold
Sparks of ideas. Free-writing that I am quite intrigued by, because we all know what I really want to do with this fancy education:
I shall live a long time. I shall live past the point of understanding how the world works. I am nearly there already, and still my heart thumps on and I haven’t had to replace my glasses in three years. Mama Zuri once told me that in death even the old and wise tremble under the newness of the world like a newborn dik dik. Perhaps she is right, which is why I don’t watch the television except for David Attenborough documentaries and Jane Austen, and only if Mary is nearby to turn it off when I am through.
Aubyn Hall is quiet these days, save for Tuesdays and every third Saturday when the west wing and great hall are opened to the public as is our agreement with the wretched Trust. My days are now kept by dust-covered portraits and the damn dogs and memories of warm corridors and people of my own blood. I have filled my Bible with their names, and this is what is left.
As for man, his days are as grass. Mama Zuri wrote it with a square carpenter’s pencil in block letters on the back of a tin label. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. When the rains came and all the boys from the quarters danced in the streambed by the north pasture. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. Starkers, shock, said Alfie. In a state of nature, said Kate. You just keep writing, girl, said Mama Zuri. I didn’t mind not being allowed outside to see the dancing boys. The orphaned dik dik had been allowed inside and to be given a name. This made all the difference. And the place thereof shall know it no more.
I first met him in my final year at small dinner party of a mutual tutor, Professor Llangyden, a boisterous Welshman who liked to surround himself with students who would perhaps one day prove an advantageous contact. I knew from the moment I set eyes on him that he would not have received an invitation had it not been for his friend, Mr. Will Barrett, a young man destined for a seat in government. His evening jacket was obviously borrowed from a man several inches thicker and a good deal taller.
Memory and truth, running parallel, sometimes intersecting—I cannot remember, for instance, if we left Mama Zuri behind or if she left us behind. Which direction did she walk on the road from Sibilo Station to Mombasa? She must have walked while Mother and Father drove because this is the way of things. Those who could have told me have gone on and taken their secrets with them. I have a dream which in which the smells of Aubyn Hall and monsoon-rotted straw linger in my mouth and nose as I walk through an unfamiliar passageway, guided along by strange portraits and paisley wallpaper, crumbling at the seams and corners. Sometimes Mama Zuri is standing there at the end of the hall, holding a wax candle from the hives at Sibilo. Sometimes Lieutenant Richardson with a black and red stained telegram. Sometimes Peter with an ageless smile and an atlas opened to the Dead Sea. Sometimes you are there with your easy courage.
I shall live a long time. I shall live past the point of understanding how the world works. I am nearly there already, and still my heart thumps on and I haven’t had to replace my glasses in three years. Mama Zuri once told me that in death even the old and wise tremble under the newness of the world like a newborn dik dik. Perhaps she is right, which is why I don’t watch the television except for David Attenborough documentaries and Jane Austen, and only if Mary is nearby to turn it off when I am through.
Aubyn Hall is quiet these days, save for Tuesdays and every third Saturday when the west wing and great hall are opened to the public as is our agreement with the wretched Trust. My days are now kept by dust-covered portraits and the damn dogs and memories of warm corridors and people of my own blood. I have filled my Bible with their names, and this is what is left.
As for man, his days are as grass. Mama Zuri wrote it with a square carpenter’s pencil in block letters on the back of a tin label. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. When the rains came and all the boys from the quarters danced in the streambed by the north pasture. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. Starkers, shock, said Alfie. In a state of nature, said Kate. You just keep writing, girl, said Mama Zuri. I didn’t mind not being allowed outside to see the dancing boys. The orphaned dik dik had been allowed inside and to be given a name. This made all the difference. And the place thereof shall know it no more.
I first met him in my final year at small dinner party of a mutual tutor, Professor Llangyden, a boisterous Welshman who liked to surround himself with students who would perhaps one day prove an advantageous contact. I knew from the moment I set eyes on him that he would not have received an invitation had it not been for his friend, Mr. Will Barrett, a young man destined for a seat in government. His evening jacket was obviously borrowed from a man several inches thicker and a good deal taller.
Memory and truth, running parallel, sometimes intersecting—I cannot remember, for instance, if we left Mama Zuri behind or if she left us behind. Which direction did she walk on the road from Sibilo Station to Mombasa? She must have walked while Mother and Father drove because this is the way of things. Those who could have told me have gone on and taken their secrets with them. I have a dream which in which the smells of Aubyn Hall and monsoon-rotted straw linger in my mouth and nose as I walk through an unfamiliar passageway, guided along by strange portraits and paisley wallpaper, crumbling at the seams and corners. Sometimes Mama Zuri is standing there at the end of the hall, holding a wax candle from the hives at Sibilo. Sometimes Lieutenant Richardson with a black and red stained telegram. Sometimes Peter with an ageless smile and an atlas opened to the Dead Sea. Sometimes you are there with your easy courage.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Imposter
I just finished up my self-inflicted crash course in 16th and 17th century British History. I now know the succession of kings and queens, the difference between the Long and Rump parliament, and the definition of rough wooing. So why is it that I still feel as if someone (either them or me) has made a horrible mistake?
Maybe it is just a language barrier thing. I have to learn the language and the cultural norms. I feel like an anthropologist, observing the natives. Many of the guys wear coats and/or ties to class and everyone looks very well put together. Many people here are too smart for their own good, and get so wrapped up in what they are talking about that they don't realize that they've lost the rest of us. Or those people who speak so quickly trying to keep up with their own brains. I'm a slow talker (I'm Southern, what can I say?) and I appreciate slow talkers. I've heard many a word that I don't know, many of the academicky, made-up words that I'm not sure the people saying them know what mean.
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the challenge and meeting many sensible, fairly un-pretentious people, but it is another world. I met another Bardian who said the transition can be rough. Even at the highest levels of classes at Bard, there was always humor and the fear of taking oneself too seriously. There have been several moments where I have wanted to laugh outloud at the absurdity of some people in my classes, but I quickly realize that no one else finds it funny, so I stifle a grin and watch for others doing the same. Those are the people I want to know better.
Maybe it is just a language barrier thing. I have to learn the language and the cultural norms. I feel like an anthropologist, observing the natives. Many of the guys wear coats and/or ties to class and everyone looks very well put together. Many people here are too smart for their own good, and get so wrapped up in what they are talking about that they don't realize that they've lost the rest of us. Or those people who speak so quickly trying to keep up with their own brains. I'm a slow talker (I'm Southern, what can I say?) and I appreciate slow talkers. I've heard many a word that I don't know, many of the academicky, made-up words that I'm not sure the people saying them know what mean.
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the challenge and meeting many sensible, fairly un-pretentious people, but it is another world. I met another Bardian who said the transition can be rough. Even at the highest levels of classes at Bard, there was always humor and the fear of taking oneself too seriously. There have been several moments where I have wanted to laugh outloud at the absurdity of some people in my classes, but I quickly realize that no one else finds it funny, so I stifle a grin and watch for others doing the same. Those are the people I want to know better.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Tears
I had my grieving dreams last night.
On a beach unlike any I've ever seen. Lots of driftwood. I was there with my mother and we were desperately trying to pack up a room and move out of the beach house. The grief seemed distant and yet so raw, and we were both avoiding it until it blew up. Someone we loved fiercely had died. I'm not even going to write down who here because it was so horrible and I can't bear to think about it in the daylight hours. Somehow in the dream I ended up crawling across this beach, so stricken with sadness that normal balance was not possible. In the dream, I sobbed and wailed for what seemed like hours. Every time I tried to redirect myself, I was bowled over again. As I entered the door to the beach house, I knew that I would never stop crying ever again. How could I? And then I realized that my mother was in more pain than I could ever imagine. And so I cried even harder. When I finally woke up, dry-eyed and shaken, I felt this insane sense of relief. I usually know that dreams are not real, but in my crying dreams, I cannot see past the cloud of grief.
I know this probably sounds like a horrifying nightmare, but it really isn't. I can't cry like that when I am awake. To do so in my dreams feels oddly satisfying, maybe even good. It hurts, but the lack of control is almost exhilarating. I've had these dreams for many years, even before I had encountered grief and loss in my waking life. They are rare, but poignant. I am usually not that shaken by them, unless, as in this one, the death is someone I do love and care for in real life and not a vague or created figure. I don't even think that these dreams are a sign of distress or tension in my waking life. They just...exist. They allow a kind of release that I don't often get.
On a beach unlike any I've ever seen. Lots of driftwood. I was there with my mother and we were desperately trying to pack up a room and move out of the beach house. The grief seemed distant and yet so raw, and we were both avoiding it until it blew up. Someone we loved fiercely had died. I'm not even going to write down who here because it was so horrible and I can't bear to think about it in the daylight hours. Somehow in the dream I ended up crawling across this beach, so stricken with sadness that normal balance was not possible. In the dream, I sobbed and wailed for what seemed like hours. Every time I tried to redirect myself, I was bowled over again. As I entered the door to the beach house, I knew that I would never stop crying ever again. How could I? And then I realized that my mother was in more pain than I could ever imagine. And so I cried even harder. When I finally woke up, dry-eyed and shaken, I felt this insane sense of relief. I usually know that dreams are not real, but in my crying dreams, I cannot see past the cloud of grief.
I know this probably sounds like a horrifying nightmare, but it really isn't. I can't cry like that when I am awake. To do so in my dreams feels oddly satisfying, maybe even good. It hurts, but the lack of control is almost exhilarating. I've had these dreams for many years, even before I had encountered grief and loss in my waking life. They are rare, but poignant. I am usually not that shaken by them, unless, as in this one, the death is someone I do love and care for in real life and not a vague or created figure. I don't even think that these dreams are a sign of distress or tension in my waking life. They just...exist. They allow a kind of release that I don't often get.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
New smells
It’s funny how when you move to a new place, every time you step out your door it feels like some grand excursion, including that panicked feeling right before you close the door to your building (Do I have my keys, my wallet, my money, my phone, my bus pass, my whatever) as if you might never find your way back. And every small errand leaves you weary of mind and muscle and sore of foot. Somehow I manage to become drenched in sweat even though it is so cool and breezy outside. And you never realize how little walking you do living in a rural area with a car until you move to a city without one.
I’ve only been here for two days now, but I am slowly navigating this neighborhood. I seem chronically unsure of biking etiquette. My fat tires do not go as fast as the skinny road bike tires, so I feel bad being in the middle of the lane, but I don’t want to get run off the road by crazy cab drivers. I also don’t know exactly what to do about one lane roads. They go right to all the places I want to go, but I always seem to be on the wrong side. And I also see tons of people biking on the sidewalk, which I thought was not allowed. Is it rude or understandable. In general, I would be happier if I had my helmet which somehow was left behind in SC.
Anyway, I am more or less settled in aside from a small stack on unsorted clothes. I even made my bed today to make the room more aesthetically pleasing. My roommates and I are beginning to shed layers and sort out logistical stuff. Now that I have made the move unscathed, I am ready to begin what I cam here to do. Being here gives me the confidence boost I need. I feel a need to prove myself, that thirst that got me through Bard in three years and saw me to the end of some difficult papers. I’m a little tired of the nervous social energy in learning the lay of the social landscape. Some lessons so far.
1.) Being poor and coming from no money is NOT status quo here, and it makes people of means uncomfortable when people without means talk about money.
2.) Fuck is in vogue. Shit is decidedly out of vogue. Sonofabitch is probably out of the question.
3.) Leg cuffs are getting smaller. Most people are not having an existential crisis about it.
4.) Graduate school dinner parties are actually kind of expensive, because generally it is good manners to bring something (apparently) usually wine. And Yellow Tail probably would raise eyebrows.
5.) I need a new bike lock. A mean looking chain with a teeny u-lock. Or so says Mr. So and So at the bike store.
Some new smells:
1) My new bathroom, not mildewy, but strangely other.
2) New coffee, mediocre at $8.50 a pound.
3) Peppermint and Tea Tree together....not a new smell, but one I haven't smelled since I left Bard nursery school.
4) Foreign-smelling honey, grown in Kansas where people are batshitcrazy.
5) The most amazingly sweet apple I've ever had.
I’ve only been here for two days now, but I am slowly navigating this neighborhood. I seem chronically unsure of biking etiquette. My fat tires do not go as fast as the skinny road bike tires, so I feel bad being in the middle of the lane, but I don’t want to get run off the road by crazy cab drivers. I also don’t know exactly what to do about one lane roads. They go right to all the places I want to go, but I always seem to be on the wrong side. And I also see tons of people biking on the sidewalk, which I thought was not allowed. Is it rude or understandable. In general, I would be happier if I had my helmet which somehow was left behind in SC.
Anyway, I am more or less settled in aside from a small stack on unsorted clothes. I even made my bed today to make the room more aesthetically pleasing. My roommates and I are beginning to shed layers and sort out logistical stuff. Now that I have made the move unscathed, I am ready to begin what I cam here to do. Being here gives me the confidence boost I need. I feel a need to prove myself, that thirst that got me through Bard in three years and saw me to the end of some difficult papers. I’m a little tired of the nervous social energy in learning the lay of the social landscape. Some lessons so far.
1.) Being poor and coming from no money is NOT status quo here, and it makes people of means uncomfortable when people without means talk about money.
2.) Fuck is in vogue. Shit is decidedly out of vogue. Sonofabitch is probably out of the question.
3.) Leg cuffs are getting smaller. Most people are not having an existential crisis about it.
4.) Graduate school dinner parties are actually kind of expensive, because generally it is good manners to bring something (apparently) usually wine. And Yellow Tail probably would raise eyebrows.
5.) I need a new bike lock. A mean looking chain with a teeny u-lock. Or so says Mr. So and So at the bike store.
Some new smells:
1) My new bathroom, not mildewy, but strangely other.
2) New coffee, mediocre at $8.50 a pound.
3) Peppermint and Tea Tree together....not a new smell, but one I haven't smelled since I left Bard nursery school.
4) Foreign-smelling honey, grown in Kansas where people are batshitcrazy.
5) The most amazingly sweet apple I've ever had.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Free to a good home
I think this is my favorite Bob Dylan song ever. It is the ultimate slow dancing in the bedroom song...or maybe the perfect lullaby. Anyway, it's been covered by a million people, so I thought I would join them. I'd really like Lucinda Williams to do this song.
In other news, I am trying to find a place to live come September. Mostly I'm finding sublets, but I have sent out a few emails to people searching for roommates and I even posted a little roommate groping note on the apartment board. I read a bunch of them, and they seemed to be 500-word biographical sketches more than anything else. It wasn't so much "find a room" as "find a life partner." It's a bit like a platonic dating site. I didn't give a sketch, just the normal "I can spend this much, I want to live in this area, and I have references/money/blah blah blah."
What should I have put?
Insufferably disorganized South Carolinian in need of place to house her madness.
Takes abnormally long showers.
Cannot abide life in August without a damn good air conditioner.
Occasionally makes enough grits to feed a family of 20 because have yet to learn how to measure out grits, despite being taught at one point.
Sings gospel hymns in the shower. No interest in proselytizing.
Housebroken.
Loses important papers.
Cannot find keys on a regular basis.
Watches The Vicar of Dibley when upset or depressed.
Icemaker preferred.
Must be let out to pee at 5 am.
Sheds.
Small adoption fee may apply.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Deathbed
A month has passed since PaPa died. I haven’t really slowed down enough until now to think about it much. I’ve seen Mema a few times and noted how frail and windblown she seems. I can only imagine what it is like to be left in such a state, the center of gravity of your universe suddenly gone, now a deep dark hole in the middle of your life.
I suppose I never realized how much Mema and Papa loved each other. I never remember them being in the least bit affectionate with one another, not in the way my own parents are. Their life together seemed more practical than passionate, more ingrained than invented. I figured the births of their two sons were the result of a two sudden bursts of friendliness very much in the past tense. When I was driving Mema to her hair appointment the Tuesday after, she told me that after his last stay in the hospital, he could no longer sleep lying down. She said for almost the entirety of their marriage, they had fallen asleep facing one another and holding hands.
The deathbed is such a hard, uncertain reality from the moment it ceases to become a hospital bed and becomes the deathbed. There is that excruciating moment when it is understood that there will be no homecoming. For us, it was a hard and fast transition. Papa had rallied his last bit of strength when Shosha came home. The words “recovery” and “rehabilitation” had been mentioned. He had looked at us and known us and talked to us and loved us. One moment Shosha and I were talking to him about his childhood and the war, smiling softly to one another when he drifted off into sleep. The next moment, we exchanged anxious glances as his weak lungs began to rattle and hum. The nurses were called in. His gurgling breath echoed around the room, a horrible sound like crumpling rice paper.
For nearly two hours we listened to him struggle and gag, suctioning the phlegm out of his mouth when it finally came out. I remember when the others came into the room, wanting to protest to them that not an hour before he had been talking and smiling and fine. And now we were watching him drown, watching him as his lungs fought the inevitable, frantically asking the nurses if anything could be done. And then asking them if this was the end. Hospital bed became deathbed. Visitors became mourners.
I think all of us were pretty determined to get this right. After his gurgling stopped with the Morphine and Ativan, the vigil began. It began with the acceptance that this was the last stand. There would be no recovery. The details get fuzzy after this. I remember holding his warm, slightly swollen hand, tracing the veins and massaging the palms in an intimate and loving way, things that would never have been entirely appropriate before. I stroked his hair and tucked it behind his ear. I touched him like I would a lover or a baby.
I watched as the people with far more complex relationships to Papa than mine came to terms with our situation. I watched my uncle, damaged as he is, cry almost imperceptibly. I watched Mema, facing this horrible reality that she had been preparing for, but not really known how would feel. I watched her crumble and straighten and crumble and straighten. I watched my own father, saw the lines of anguish and worry in his face. I watched Shosha as she struggled with this shock of death after being so far away. I watched my mother, whose sensibility in a crisis is matched only by her compassion and capacity to love, comfort us all in the ways we needed it most.
On Saturday morning, I read Papa and Mema my Jocassee piece, as Papa began to slip into advanced organ failure. It was stupid, but I thought it would make a change from the sterile and surprisingly loud hospital noises. Plus, I was hoping to put Mema to sleep (she had not slept all night). Maybe my voice was heard past the fog of morphine. It didn’t matter. I should have read it to him earlier, but it was better late than never.
Saturday was a day of music and counting breaths. We watched as his breaths came slower and slower and more shallow. The nurses told us with their faces that this was most likely the end. So we watched and counted the seconds between shallow gasps. Breath…2..3..4..21...22. It was like some frantic form of yoga relaxation breathing. And then there came a moment when we all sat around his bed, an intuitive (or wishful) feeling that we could somehow lift his soul out of his tired, broken body to that next place. Mama asked me to sing and tried to herself, but couldn’t. I didn’t think I could handle a hymn, so I sang “Riddle Song” that Leah taught me when I was 18 or 19 and that I had sung as a fail proof lullaby first to Anna and Catherine, then to Kira, then to Eli, then to Stevie. After that, I could move on to others. We sang softly and poorly, our throats filled with the cotton of grief, but mostly on key and hitting those few lovely moments of familial harmony. The nurses closed the doors to give us privacy, though I’m sure we were an intriguing bunch. We exhausted our hymn knowledge, pausing to count seconds between breaths after each song. I remember pleading with God to just take him now. Give us this beautiful moment to remember. Make this death into a poem. Let us line his passage to heaven with sweet songs. We were all ready. There was no need for him to suffer any longer. We had just sung him our blessing. There had already been so many moments when he was surrounded by the people he loved the most. Times when we could have all watched him leave the room for the last time.
But it was another whole day. Shosha had to go back to California. We who were not on the deathbed had living needs; papers to write, calls to be made, showers to be had, food to be eaten, decisions to be made, sleep to be snatched from a restless night. I remember being so angry. Angry at God who would not just take him from that God-awful hospital. Angry at an old man’s surprisingly stubborn heart.
He held on for so long, long enough to make us think that maybe we had been wrong. Maybe we had given up to quickly. The nurses were so surprised each morning and evening when they changed shifts. They asked us if we knew of anyone that he was waiting for. Sometimes death will wait for reunification. They had seen it happen. We then thought that perhaps he was waiting for permission. And we all, in our way, gave it. I whispered in his ear that he could go. That we were all ready and willing to let him go. That we loved him. That we would take care of each other. I told him to let go of this tired old world. I heard my father assure him that he would take care of Mema. Maybe this did the trick, but it was a delayed reaction. Papa was a champion worrier. Maybe he really did need to feel this assurance that he could leave us behind and that we would be okay.
Apprehension gave way to exhaustion. Nicholas, Mama, and Dale left to get some rest. Mema sat fretting in the corner about funeral stuff while Daddy tried to convince her to take things one at a time. I propped my computer by Papa playing gospel grass internet radio. I held his hand and began counting breaths. It was sometimes up to 70 or 80 seconds between shallow gasps. Every time, I thought “this is it” and then he would gasp again. Maybe it was the music, or the fact that I was physically and emotionally worn down. But I let go of his hand and began to zone out, tracing the pattern of the wallpaper with my eyes. A few minutes passed and I was vaguely aware of his breathing. And then vaguely aware that there had been no gasping.
I waited for three long minutes, afraid to touch him, paralyzed. I always imagined the face turning blue and the body suddenly becoming limp, but the only thing I noticed was that his lips turned the same color as his skin. I struggled to find my voice. I remember trying to somehow get my father’s attention without alerting my grandmother, worried that I was making a mistake. I had been 12 inches from him. I had expected death to be louder, more obvious. What followed was a surreal half hour. He had gone away in the blink of an eye, but it took about four people listening for a non-existent heartbeat before he was declared.
I remember reading this poem by Thomas Hood a long time ago.
WE watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed--she had
Another morn than ours.
I am always humbled by the ability of poetry to transcend in this world.
I suppose I never realized how much Mema and Papa loved each other. I never remember them being in the least bit affectionate with one another, not in the way my own parents are. Their life together seemed more practical than passionate, more ingrained than invented. I figured the births of their two sons were the result of a two sudden bursts of friendliness very much in the past tense. When I was driving Mema to her hair appointment the Tuesday after, she told me that after his last stay in the hospital, he could no longer sleep lying down. She said for almost the entirety of their marriage, they had fallen asleep facing one another and holding hands.
The deathbed is such a hard, uncertain reality from the moment it ceases to become a hospital bed and becomes the deathbed. There is that excruciating moment when it is understood that there will be no homecoming. For us, it was a hard and fast transition. Papa had rallied his last bit of strength when Shosha came home. The words “recovery” and “rehabilitation” had been mentioned. He had looked at us and known us and talked to us and loved us. One moment Shosha and I were talking to him about his childhood and the war, smiling softly to one another when he drifted off into sleep. The next moment, we exchanged anxious glances as his weak lungs began to rattle and hum. The nurses were called in. His gurgling breath echoed around the room, a horrible sound like crumpling rice paper.
For nearly two hours we listened to him struggle and gag, suctioning the phlegm out of his mouth when it finally came out. I remember when the others came into the room, wanting to protest to them that not an hour before he had been talking and smiling and fine. And now we were watching him drown, watching him as his lungs fought the inevitable, frantically asking the nurses if anything could be done. And then asking them if this was the end. Hospital bed became deathbed. Visitors became mourners.
I think all of us were pretty determined to get this right. After his gurgling stopped with the Morphine and Ativan, the vigil began. It began with the acceptance that this was the last stand. There would be no recovery. The details get fuzzy after this. I remember holding his warm, slightly swollen hand, tracing the veins and massaging the palms in an intimate and loving way, things that would never have been entirely appropriate before. I stroked his hair and tucked it behind his ear. I touched him like I would a lover or a baby.
I watched as the people with far more complex relationships to Papa than mine came to terms with our situation. I watched my uncle, damaged as he is, cry almost imperceptibly. I watched Mema, facing this horrible reality that she had been preparing for, but not really known how would feel. I watched her crumble and straighten and crumble and straighten. I watched my own father, saw the lines of anguish and worry in his face. I watched Shosha as she struggled with this shock of death after being so far away. I watched my mother, whose sensibility in a crisis is matched only by her compassion and capacity to love, comfort us all in the ways we needed it most.
On Saturday morning, I read Papa and Mema my Jocassee piece, as Papa began to slip into advanced organ failure. It was stupid, but I thought it would make a change from the sterile and surprisingly loud hospital noises. Plus, I was hoping to put Mema to sleep (she had not slept all night). Maybe my voice was heard past the fog of morphine. It didn’t matter. I should have read it to him earlier, but it was better late than never.
Saturday was a day of music and counting breaths. We watched as his breaths came slower and slower and more shallow. The nurses told us with their faces that this was most likely the end. So we watched and counted the seconds between shallow gasps. Breath…2..3..4..21...22. It was like some frantic form of yoga relaxation breathing. And then there came a moment when we all sat around his bed, an intuitive (or wishful) feeling that we could somehow lift his soul out of his tired, broken body to that next place. Mama asked me to sing and tried to herself, but couldn’t. I didn’t think I could handle a hymn, so I sang “Riddle Song” that Leah taught me when I was 18 or 19 and that I had sung as a fail proof lullaby first to Anna and Catherine, then to Kira, then to Eli, then to Stevie. After that, I could move on to others. We sang softly and poorly, our throats filled with the cotton of grief, but mostly on key and hitting those few lovely moments of familial harmony. The nurses closed the doors to give us privacy, though I’m sure we were an intriguing bunch. We exhausted our hymn knowledge, pausing to count seconds between breaths after each song. I remember pleading with God to just take him now. Give us this beautiful moment to remember. Make this death into a poem. Let us line his passage to heaven with sweet songs. We were all ready. There was no need for him to suffer any longer. We had just sung him our blessing. There had already been so many moments when he was surrounded by the people he loved the most. Times when we could have all watched him leave the room for the last time.
But it was another whole day. Shosha had to go back to California. We who were not on the deathbed had living needs; papers to write, calls to be made, showers to be had, food to be eaten, decisions to be made, sleep to be snatched from a restless night. I remember being so angry. Angry at God who would not just take him from that God-awful hospital. Angry at an old man’s surprisingly stubborn heart.
He held on for so long, long enough to make us think that maybe we had been wrong. Maybe we had given up to quickly. The nurses were so surprised each morning and evening when they changed shifts. They asked us if we knew of anyone that he was waiting for. Sometimes death will wait for reunification. They had seen it happen. We then thought that perhaps he was waiting for permission. And we all, in our way, gave it. I whispered in his ear that he could go. That we were all ready and willing to let him go. That we loved him. That we would take care of each other. I told him to let go of this tired old world. I heard my father assure him that he would take care of Mema. Maybe this did the trick, but it was a delayed reaction. Papa was a champion worrier. Maybe he really did need to feel this assurance that he could leave us behind and that we would be okay.
Apprehension gave way to exhaustion. Nicholas, Mama, and Dale left to get some rest. Mema sat fretting in the corner about funeral stuff while Daddy tried to convince her to take things one at a time. I propped my computer by Papa playing gospel grass internet radio. I held his hand and began counting breaths. It was sometimes up to 70 or 80 seconds between shallow gasps. Every time, I thought “this is it” and then he would gasp again. Maybe it was the music, or the fact that I was physically and emotionally worn down. But I let go of his hand and began to zone out, tracing the pattern of the wallpaper with my eyes. A few minutes passed and I was vaguely aware of his breathing. And then vaguely aware that there had been no gasping.
I waited for three long minutes, afraid to touch him, paralyzed. I always imagined the face turning blue and the body suddenly becoming limp, but the only thing I noticed was that his lips turned the same color as his skin. I struggled to find my voice. I remember trying to somehow get my father’s attention without alerting my grandmother, worried that I was making a mistake. I had been 12 inches from him. I had expected death to be louder, more obvious. What followed was a surreal half hour. He had gone away in the blink of an eye, but it took about four people listening for a non-existent heartbeat before he was declared.
I remember reading this poem by Thomas Hood a long time ago.
WE watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed--she had
Another morn than ours.
I am always humbled by the ability of poetry to transcend in this world.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Saying goodbye
I needed to write something. So I did.
We are born alone. Our first breath is our own and no one else’s. Our little lungs spring to life as we are welcomed into arms that love us. But we are lucky in birth for we have a mother whose body surrounds us and protects us, easing our passage into the world and waiting to comfort us the moment we arrive in it.
We die alone. The last breath is a breath we take on our own, and after that…I have to believe that we are welcomed into arms that love us. I think perhaps what is so hard about losing someone we love is the helpless feeling of knowing that in those few moments, we could not provide a seamless, un-solitary transition into the beyond.
I have never had a chance to say goodbye to someone before now. What a strange blessing it is. To know that the last words you spoke to someone were words of an uncomplicated love, that he looked last upon the face of love.
I say this all pre-emptively. PaPa is near the end of this life--how near is uncertain-- but the truth of it is circling our hearts…and his. We say goodbye every moment. With every touch, every whisper, even when we don’t know what to say.
My grandfather’s line is one that has been broken and scarred, fragile and fierce, secrets and unspoken words littering the genetic make-up it seems. I know this. I have seen the battered hurt in my daddy, the furrowed brow I’ve always tried to make smooth again. But this is not the family I have known. From my earliest memories, PaPa has been a gentle, affectionate grandfather, never a harsh word or a begrudging look. He has softened even more in recent years, “I love you’s” coming easily and simply. What, perhaps, he could not give to his own sons, he gave in abundance to his granddaughters, and perhaps more so to his grandson. That is the PaPa I have known. Even here at the end, his firm grip on my hand and the slight smile makes me sure of his love. Loving someone is a blessing, perhaps even more than being loved. I’m so happy that he has loved me in such a pure and uncomplicated way.
My tears came freely tonight, but they were not even tears of grief or fear or uncertainty. They were tears of relief….of joy. How lucky are we to be able to say the things that needed to be said. How fortunate that we are able to give PaPa the gift of hearing what he needs to say to us, like “I love you” and “You’ve been a good son.” Perhaps this is as close as we can get to deliverance, to taking his hand and leading him into the next place. I can’t help this feeling in my gut that this is what we are meant to do.
These moments are what this family needs, the chance to speak what has been unspoken. It makes me realize how fortunate I am. If I were to die tomorrow, there would be no misunderstandings between my family and I. I am loved and I love. No questions or stipulations. No complications or conditions. Life has been complicated. Love has been certain. There is no need for words that have been spoken every second of my life.
We are born alone. Our first breath is our own and no one else’s. Our little lungs spring to life as we are welcomed into arms that love us. But we are lucky in birth for we have a mother whose body surrounds us and protects us, easing our passage into the world and waiting to comfort us the moment we arrive in it.
We die alone. The last breath is a breath we take on our own, and after that…I have to believe that we are welcomed into arms that love us. I think perhaps what is so hard about losing someone we love is the helpless feeling of knowing that in those few moments, we could not provide a seamless, un-solitary transition into the beyond.
I have never had a chance to say goodbye to someone before now. What a strange blessing it is. To know that the last words you spoke to someone were words of an uncomplicated love, that he looked last upon the face of love.
I say this all pre-emptively. PaPa is near the end of this life--how near is uncertain-- but the truth of it is circling our hearts…and his. We say goodbye every moment. With every touch, every whisper, even when we don’t know what to say.
My grandfather’s line is one that has been broken and scarred, fragile and fierce, secrets and unspoken words littering the genetic make-up it seems. I know this. I have seen the battered hurt in my daddy, the furrowed brow I’ve always tried to make smooth again. But this is not the family I have known. From my earliest memories, PaPa has been a gentle, affectionate grandfather, never a harsh word or a begrudging look. He has softened even more in recent years, “I love you’s” coming easily and simply. What, perhaps, he could not give to his own sons, he gave in abundance to his granddaughters, and perhaps more so to his grandson. That is the PaPa I have known. Even here at the end, his firm grip on my hand and the slight smile makes me sure of his love. Loving someone is a blessing, perhaps even more than being loved. I’m so happy that he has loved me in such a pure and uncomplicated way.
My tears came freely tonight, but they were not even tears of grief or fear or uncertainty. They were tears of relief….of joy. How lucky are we to be able to say the things that needed to be said. How fortunate that we are able to give PaPa the gift of hearing what he needs to say to us, like “I love you” and “You’ve been a good son.” Perhaps this is as close as we can get to deliverance, to taking his hand and leading him into the next place. I can’t help this feeling in my gut that this is what we are meant to do.
These moments are what this family needs, the chance to speak what has been unspoken. It makes me realize how fortunate I am. If I were to die tomorrow, there would be no misunderstandings between my family and I. I am loved and I love. No questions or stipulations. No complications or conditions. Life has been complicated. Love has been certain. There is no need for words that have been spoken every second of my life.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Mother, I climbed
I'm figuring out how to use iDVD. And I need to sing more lest I forget how. Cheers! It was either blurry or black. I chose blurry.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Shortest Day
Shosha and I recorded this a few days after Christmas with her friend Mike. It was so nice to sing with her again, and with a new song to boot. We practiced for a really long time because it was a difficult harmony for me to find. In the bridge, I did it really well one time and then it took me about 15 times to get it the same again.
We were both nursing colds and so Shosha brought a bottle of Maker's Mark to help us sing better. It was pretty raunchy stuff and didn't seem very helpful in the voice department. But it turned out useful in the nerves department. Shosha put down her track and then I put down mine....several times. It was okay, but a little off somehow. Neither of us were singing very well on our own. So we did the Beach Boys think and just laid down a live track. It did the trick. There is something to be said about those sister harmonies.
I wish I had a copy of our version of Lyle Lovett's Family Reserve. We do it so well, and we've even gotten to the point where we don't giggle in inappropriate places.
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