we wait – impatiently – for the mornings we can sit outside against the house facing the sun with our coffee. we hike in our magical bristol woods and sit in the nature megaphone, out of the wind, facing the sun. we have sat on mountaintops facing the sun and on rocks beside the lake facing the sun. in canoes facing the sun and on pontoon boats facing the sun. at outdoor cafes facing the sun and squeezing into windowseats facing the sun. on the deck facing the sun and in the dirt of the trail facing the sun. on the beach facing the sun and by the pool facing the sun. we sit on adirondack chairs that we move around the yard facing the sun and we lay in the hammock that we also move around the yard facing the sun. we are the dr seusses of ‘facing the sun’ lingo.
i am a sign-reader. whether i am driving or riding in the car, i read signs. billboards, people’s clever license plates, bumper stickers, storefronts, oh, and road signs. there are certain areas of the country where signs for attorneys are rampant. other areas tout strong religious beliefs. some signs are clever “buckle up next million miles” and some are deeply insightful “when there’s only one race and that’s mankind… love is in you.” because we adore both road trips and short drives, we are privy to signs galore. one of my pet peeves is to see blatant spelling or punctuation errors on billboards; it makes me rant for several minutes about editors and proof-reading and the propensity for people to ignore the amazing thing called the dictionary.
we took a drive the other day. it was after all the services of the week were over and we were unplugging. turning the car west we headed out in search of a new hiking trail. on our drive we passed this sign. PRAY FOR OUR NATION. no fancy font, no centered spacing, just four simple words. i don’t know how long that sign has been there. it’s not in the front yard of any religious building; it’s just there, in a small park-like setting. i thought, “no kidding.” it seems apt timing.
instead of reading the paper first thing everyday now, we are reading meditations. we are considering the mica moments of the day before, the mica moments to come. we are trying to be hopeful, trying to slough off pettiness and disagreement, trying to avoid those who are clearly toxic to themselves and others, trying to engage in positive ways, trying to spend time doing things that advance us as humans in a big world rather than mire us in stunted selfish plots to further polarize and make inequity even more profound.
PRAY FOR OUR NATION doesn’t just start with folding hands and closing eyes, as much as that may help. it also starts with reaching out hands, opening your eyes, listening, learning, believing that there is only one race and it is mankind.
“GO AWAY” it reads. the sign on this front door is bracing. not just a polite “no soliciting” or even a rougher “no trespassing”, “GO AWAY” is kind of frightening. i don’t really like aggressive people…the kind of people who choose attack-mode first, before anything else. the kind of people who act like they are “communicating”, but are, indeed, just stoking the fire with toxic non-communicative venom. yikes. GO AWAY.
reading the news app on our phones each morning makes us think the words “GO AWAY” every day. certain folks, bullying and disrespectful, on all sides of the aisle, rungs of the ladder and regardless of their political leanings, need to tame their thinking and rhetoric. it’s bracing. yikes. GO AWAY.
the person revving their engine in the car behind you. they weave back and forth from one side of the lane to the other, flashing lights, putting their car into neutral, revving once again…all while you search for a place to safely pull over so that they might pass, despite the passing-zone you are driving in. their angry behavior is bracing. yikes. GO AWAY.
the problem with all of this is that making someone GO AWAY doesn’t really make them go away. it just nullifies the problem for a moment or two. it doesn’t render them less aggressive; it doesn’t enlighten them. it just makes you THINK they are gone. unless you hold the whole world in a restraining-order-pose, you will have to deal with aggressive people and their aggression. there must be a common place we can all share.
maybe we don’t really need signs that say “GO AWAY”. maybe we need signs that say “COME IN. LET’S TALK.”
you have those friends. the ones you don’t get to talk to or see all the time, but the instant you call or text or, even better, get to be with them, you pick up right where you left off. sometimes, those calls or visits are really long; there’s so much to catch up on.
susan and i had one of those calls recently. the conversation ranged across a gigantic prairie of life subjects – from children to lenten service music to food to relationships to age to challenges to direction to joys to disappointments. there’s always the inevitable “we should talk more often” and “i miss you”; times we realize how much running our crazy worlds past each other matters. the “tuition” takes just a little bit less of a toll if we can utter the gory details to our friend, divulge our imagined vindication on whatever the “tuition” is, paint a picture – describing in inordinate detail – of each of our chronicles.
linda, infinite in wisdom and groundedness, finds humor and the wise sticking point in situations. she has been there for me for decades, close by and from afar. she is a model of loving steadfastness and makes me feel as if she hugged me, even if we are only on the phone.
heidi, another one of those dear people for me, always asks, “what’s the learning?”. as infuriating as that question can be, it is a perspective-arranger. it gives you pause for thought and invites another viewpoint. the thing i may be obsessing on may not be the point after all.
toward the end of our phone call, susan and i laughed about all the things we were ‘learning’. oh yes, grateful students? well, maybe not exactly. but we are pretty enlightened (for the most part) and we kept laughing as susan said, “yeah, all these life lessons are great, but the tuition sucks.” we hung up with promises to call again soon. whether or not that happens right away, i know she is right there.
because here’s the thing we can count on – in the midst of the “tuition that sucks” is that our true relationships and the support we receive from them is endless. the conversation never really stops. it just hopscotches from one time to the next, a life-thread of lessons shared.
the woods along the trails by the des plaines river have been burned. the fires, intentionally lit to restore native life to the forest floor, to burn out the invasive species that have harmed the vegetation. already, post-burn, we can see green amid the blackened mulch. already, there is newness of life. the toxic has been deliberately remediated and goodness will prevail. it will take some time, but it will eventually tip the balance and the woods will be better for it.
this is simple. it is all around us. the necessity for an intentional burn. we wake up to a new day, a new sun, a new chance. in this time of re-birth and restoration, we are amazingly gifted. with grace.
i cannot help but think of the world despairingly coming together to lift up notre dame as it was on fire. not at all intentional, not necessary, absolutely devastating to that beautiful and majestic cathedral, yet somehow it brings together a global community of people who recognize its importance, its value, its history, its soul. and it will prevail. in a divisive world, grace.
less is often more. it is in that spirit i recorded this track of amazing grace.
download ALWAYS WITH US VOLUME 2 on iTUNES or CDBaby
there are moments you remember as a mother. more than you can possibly count. but there are some that stand out. you can feel it forever. any reminder of it makes you draw in your breath and pause. THIS morsel, THIS painting does that for me. THIS is how i feel.
the moment you are safety in a storm, respite in chaos, time-out in exhaustion. the moment of sheer relief, absolute validation, exquisite shared joy or devastating shared aching grief. the moment of connected silence, words with no air. an embrace that is forever.
we were in madison and we really could have gone anywhere to linger, have a glass of wine and a meal. my sister had sent me a birthday gift, with instructions that we celebrate with it, so we were on a quest to find the right place. it was a crowded friday early evening and just getting around the streets was nuts. we looked at each other blankly, unable to find a place to park and walk the downtown area to scour for THE place to celebrate. and then i turned the car east.
we drove onto the main street of the little town of fort atkinson and turned onto water street. there sits cafe carpe, a small been-there-since-1985 cafe, bar and music venue, run by two “fairly sentient centenarians” (as it states on their website). we walked in and were two in a total of five. it was early though so we had our choice of seating. we love to sit at the bar, especially if we are in a place where we can gaze out and see most of what is going on, people-watching and enjoying the camaraderie of a place. we found two spots at the bar, on a small stage-like pedestal, and got comfortable. two glasses of wine were delivered; lingering started. and all was perfect.
cafe carpe started to fill up. the door, with the bell on it alerting you to its opening, a sound you associate with shows like mayberry rfd, opened time and again and customers came in, greeted as they did so, clearly locals on their friday pilgrimage. it was a step into the past, and just exactly what we needed. we settled in for the next few hours in a place that felt like a second skin.
somewhere along the way, i noticed i was sitting in front of a spot on the bar with a brass plate that read “just bob” and next to my spot – to my left – was a plate that read “just leslie”. we asked our sweet bartender about this and she told us that the couple that is there every.single.friday.night.for.years. had purchased and installed these plates, marking their territory. we worried that we needed to move and asked her to give us the high sign when they arrived; we would not tread on their designated spots. she laughed and agreed to let us know.
leslie and bob didn’t show up while we were there, so we sat in their spots, keeping them warm for them. i’m sure i can imagine them walking in though. the door opens, the bell jangles against it and they stride in slowly. everyone turns and calls out hello to them and they take their seats at the bar, ordering maybe a standard wisconsin old-fashioned sweet. just leslie. just bob. how good is that?
i’m not sure why babycat thought we expected him to go sit in the square. but he did. jen had told us about this experiment….put blue tape on the floor and see what your cat does. laughing, we tried it. and b-cat cooperated. it wasn’t minutes after the tape was on the floor that he entered the kitchen, looked at it and went directly to it. he sat his sweet hulking body down inside that tape-box and eventually he laid down inside it (although he was definitely coloring outside the lines, so to speak.) it was astounding to watch. this is a cat, after all. and yes, he has really loved the dogbed in the sunroom and the crest box in the sitting room, but a box made of painter’s tape? we just didn’t expect him to conform so readily.
most of the time, b-cat lives his life outside the box. he acts more like a dog than a cat; i had never had a cat before him so i taught him all sorts of dog-tricks. babycat doesn’t really know the difference, although were he to look it all up, he would see ‘follows the sun around the house’ was in the rule book for cats, not dogs. but this one evening, with no prompt from us, he decided to stay inside the box. he sat, he laid down, he purred in his sleep. he was content. inside the box wasn’t too bad, i guess. later on, though, when the tape was off the floor, he didn’t seem to notice it was gone. he never looked for it. he didn’t seem to pine for its presence in his life. he just went about his not-normal-cat behavior. outside the box.
i guess there is something to be said both about living in the box and living outside the box. both have merit. one encourages you to be the cat you are defined to be. the other allows you to be the dog no one expects you to be.
you wouldn’t know it looking out the window today, but it is spring in wisconsin. under barney, the old piano in the backyard, green is sprouting up through the mulched-up-leaves and mess leftover from winter. along the back fence are some reminders that, indeed, there are plants there. in the front yard, next to the old brick wall, the daylilies are insistent and green shoots are rising amid the dried beige of fall’s version of ornamental grasses. spring. a time of new. out of the fallow, out of the dark.
yesterday, in the meditation book jonathan gave us, there was this sentence, “please give me a clean blackboard today and help me to do the writing.” do you remember writing on the blackboard in elementary school? it was always an honor to have that chance. the feeling of chalk on your fingertips, eraser dust in your nose. stretching to reach high enough, that sound when your fingernails scraped the board. and those days that the teacher chose to use chalk in many colors? it was nothing shy of pure excitement. funny how simply colored chalk could change things.
i loved this reading. the vision in my mind’s eye of a blackboard – or an etch-a-sketch – or one of those magic slates where you can still hear the “pfffffffft” sound in your head as you lift the cellophane off the cardboard pad to clear the picture you drew with the plastic stylus. a chance to do it over. draw it again. live it again. spring. green out of beige and brown. grace. another chance. color. new birth.
as i awake each day this spring, i cannot imagine a more grace-filled thought than please give me a clean blackboard today. pffffffffft!
the two of you: two reasons why i breathe ~ my children (cd liner notes)
this will never change. most of the things i gather around me are things that make me think of them, feel them near. it’s as simple as framed photographs or collages or a peace keychain or lanyards that say ‘colorado’ and ‘boston’. it’s a screenshot of a text message i want to remember. it’s a note jotted on my calendar about something My Girl or My Boy said to me or a date that is important to them i want to remember. it’s notes they wrote as children held by magnets to the refrigerator or in small frames bedside. it’s laughter saved in a video. it’s moments of tears driving away from their homes. it’s a rock saved on a hike in the high desert canyonlands with The Girl; it’s The Boy’s childhood favorite ny taxi pencil on my piano. nothing is huge. everything is huge.
most of my also-mom-friends will agree that, outside of spending time together, the one thing certain to lift them up on any given day is a reaching-out-to-them by a grown-up child. it’s the moment ANYthing else stops. it’s the silently-agreed-upon, strictly-held-to and always-welcome interruption in the middle of visiting others, working, hiking, cooking, sleeping. both The Girl and The Boy knew – and know – that they can call or text at any time of day or night and i will be there; i will answer. ‘always there’ is a fierce inner motherhood promise designed to both ground and frustrate children, whatever their ages. it’s a guiding principle, a mom-creed. it’s absolute. it’s truth.
from the moment they were born everything changed. and, from that moment on, one thing didn’t. the two of you ~ two reasons why i breathe ~ my children. ❤️
reverse threading 