day’s end is close. today was christmas. between last night’s eve and today we sang songs. we played carols. we lit luminaria in the backyard under an oddly warm midnight sky. we hiked in twilight woods. we gazed in the dark at trees we decorated and lit with strands of lights and glinting silver ornaments. we cooked meals and sipped wine. we watched as The Boy and The Girl opened gifts. we unwrapped presents and cards sent to us, set aside, waiting for today.
and in all of that? the common denominator?
love.
surely the spirit of the holiday season can help to mend all rifts, help to inspire goodness, help to heal us. in this world of hypocrisy, we can be united. it matters not which holiday we celebrate. what matters is heart and the rich universal tenets that march hand in hand with love.
hundreds of them. birds galore. all sitting on the wires. one by one they flutter and change places. but they all manage to sit on the wires together. they adjust. they move over. they change wires. they allow space. they allow other birds in. and they sit. (although technically, i suppose they are standing.) they don’t seem to be exclusive. they don’t seem to be judgemental. they don’t seem to be laden with agenda. they seem to be working it out – this being-in-community-together thing. refreshing.
and then it occurs to me. they are all the same kind of bird.
what would happen if a different sort of bird showed up and wanted to sit on the wire, to be in their community? would they react like people?
i read this text after rehearsals tonight. today was one of those days…not enough time and so many layers. we all have them. all the colors in the crayola box. at once.
“…the present now will later be past…”
my sweet momma would say, “this too shall pass.” knowing that applies to the most astonishing moments as well as the most staggering, i’m thinking i will try to cling to the present a bit harder. even if it is a-changin. especially if it is a-changin.
hunter doesn’t look surprised when we walk into greens and grains in egg harbor. it’s really his fault. he showed us flax chocolate brownie muffins. we bought them. we ate them. we are now addicted to them. yes, we blame hunter. in all good ways.
truth is, though, we love the feel of the store as well. a natural food store and healthy alternative grocery and cafe, the signs you can see on the windows tell a story about its purity.
hate has no home hereand NO H8 both align with our thinking, just as the flax brownie bites align with us. we will always choose a shop, a business, an organization, a community that is embracing over one that is not. i wrack my brain and my heart for reasons shops, businesses, organizations, communities, and, yes, governments, are not embracing, not inclusive, not compassionate earth-dwellers.
abiding in hate-filled rhetoric, prejudicial about anything and everything, hypocritical in obvious holding-both-ends-of-the-spectrum philosophies, demonstrably unkind, gleefully vengeful, inequitably elitist. i just ask why?
we haven’t just dreamed at the rest area. we have out and out drooled at the rest area. faces planted against the window, pillow smushed between forehead and glass, i’m sure we’ve been a spectacle.
one time we pulled into a rest area in iowa when it was still dark. we chose a spot close to the building. we just needed a few minutes to close our eyes. when we woke up, the sun was up, the rest area was full of people coming and going and our bodies were stiff from a shocking three hours of rest-area-sleeping. barely able to move, i slowly unfurled from my up-close-and-personal relationship with the steering wheel and d attempted to bring his foot down from the dashboard. with plenty of square-car-glass making us visible – like a snowglobe scene without the snow – we were right in the line of vision of absolutely anyone who had stopped to use the facilities. our wrinkled faces and the fog on the windows next to our baked-sweet-potato-smushy-visages belied any other story except resting-at-the-rest-area. i’m sure we were charming to look at.
it is not without stopping at a few rest areas that little baby scion has 237,000 miles on it. our road warrior days are accompanied by snacks and punctuated by rest areas. it’s a roadtrip symphony of necessities.
when we were driving long distance just a few days ago we googled the approximate distance across the united states, which, surprisingly, is around 3000 miles. (kansas and pennsylvania and north dakota make it seem so much further, and, going the other way, so do georgia and indiana.) but i digress. so that means that the current mileage equates to having driven this little vehicle 79 times across the country.
we have visited rest areas in most states in this nation and we can tell you where the nice ones are, like the ones in ohio on i80. we can also tell you where the scary ones are: montana, a certain rest area down south where you drive about a mile off the road and a couple security guards watch you walk in and out of the building. you can get a free cup of coffee at the rest area on the eastern side of colorado and orange or grapefruit juice entering florida. you can get maps and brochures at most rest areas and the ones in indiana specialize in those magazines where you can find coupons for hotels you would rather not stay in. pennsylvania has full-service areas, as does one little spot in kansas. you can “eat and get gas” as they say, the word-smithing on that not expected to be classy. you are reminded that this is a rest area, after all.
the rest area on the way home from on-island is always a stopping ground these days. for various reasons we won’t list, the little blue sign on the side of the road is a welcome sight and we eagerly pull into a spot. recently, after packing for hours and then leaving, we leaned back and closed our eyes at this wayside. full-out dreaming commenced. when we woke, which wasn’t too long after, we shared notes and our surprise about falling asleep in a matter of minutes. d said, “if you can dream at the rest area, you’re supposed to be there.” yup. i bet all kinds of safety engineers would agree with that.
it was in iowa again – this state must make us tired – just a few days ago on a trip when we traveled 24 hours in a 36 hour period of time. having sampled (read: gorged on) the whole buffet of snacks, i was driving, desperately seeking the little blue sign, pining for the chance to close my eyes.
alas, finally. the rest area. we pulled in. d handed me a pillow. i laid my face against the window. and voila! a sight to behold.
as barney ages in our backyard, he clings to his original form – he is a piano, first and foremost.
barney has spent the last four years in our backyard. his presence is inspiring. rescued from the dark church basement boiler room he had been in, the light of the sun and weather he now endures have brought nuance to his life as a piano. no longer serving his original purpose, he has a new destiny.
but barney’s soul remains the same. you look at him and you know he is a piano. no ifs, ands or buts. and he is cherished.
there is a different kind of power in his spot in the backyard. it’s not one of crescendo-ing music. instead it is now one of steady quiet. it is one of a history of service and workhorse reliability. it is one of a history of the dawn of creative moments and the dusk of amens sung in sunday school classrooms or weekly meeting rooms of committees or choirs. his piano-soul now resounds in the chirp of every bird or chipmunk, the sound of the wind and the rain, the glint of the sunlight deepening the wrinkles of his keys.
every morning on island i grabbed the phone and, usually still with pjs on, walked outside, to water’s edge, to take a picture. in this way i have an amazing collection of the moody displays of our little bay-of-lake-michigan during the months we were there. living right on the water was a gift…it balanced out all the other-ness of our time there…a collection of life and work and its challenges and joys from back at home as well as on our new little island.
we continue to be grateful to deb, who is generously sharing the magic of this sweet littlehouse with us as we live there. many times this summer and early fall we would get a text message from her house around the cove, pointing out the moonrise or the glittering of sun on the lake…gentle reminders of what was really important.
as fall rolls into winter i will miss sharing that bay and hog island with d and with deb-just-around-the-bend. i will miss the lake as it greets the day and lingers at day’s end. i will miss the sound of gentle waves and deeply unsettled surf.
i know that each tide brought with it new hurdles, new hiccups, new pitfalls. provocation is alive and well. but each tide also brought with it new triumphs, new delights, new joys, new learnings. inspiration is alive and well.
in the last few days, both of us have heard the deeply sad news that someone in our lives – each a unique voice of great wisdom – has passed. it’s bracing. we are here and then we are not.
in all the difficult moments we have had these past months, both on-island and off-island, these past few days once again remind us of what is actually important.
it’s not the work challenges or politics. it’s not the worry over details and relationship snags. it’s not competition or one-upping someone else, nor is it about power-struggles and issues of control. it’s not about being undervalued or serving those who do not appreciate you, nor is it about the tippy-top of the ladder where lower rungs are no longer visible to you. it’s not what you don’t have or what you wish you had.
instead, it’s what you do have.
it’s the simplest of moments. when you look over and dogdog and babycat are butt-to-butt snuggling. or you are sitting next to your beloved, writing or reading together. or your grown children call to chat a bit, out of the blue. you spend time together. you do good work and stand in it. or you take a walk, in fresh air, under a sunlit sky or in a night full of stars. you savor a hot cup of coffee or raise a glass of wine in a toast with friends. you embrace or hold hands with someone you love. the simplest.
with gratitude to a man, alan walker, who encouraged me to love both the piano and open-faced peanut butter sandwiches. and my thanks to a man i never met, quinn, who, in innumerable conversations in his study, brought many moments of wisdom and perspective to david. you both remain reminders of what is really important.
babycat’s work ethic is clear. he is not dedicated to screen time, nor is he dedicated to long portions of work-related tasks. he prefers to nap. anywhere. anytime. his eyes squeezed shut, he pretends to be unaware of the things going on around him. because he is “big-boned”, a-lot-of-cat, scooting him out of the way is like gently easing a massive concrete block a little to the left or a little to the right; there is no give. yet we work around him, we absolutely accommodate him. if he is sleeping on the bed, taking up perpendicular space, we will squish to the side, choosing to list starboard or port, whichever direction he is not. he rules supreme.
i wake in the middle of the night, d jostling me, a clear sign to turn over and stop snoring. only i am not snoring. from the foot of the bed or perhaps under the bed, where jostling is impossible, it is babycat who snores loudly. his contented breaths both amuse us and keep us awake. a gentle poke-at-the-cat yields a temporary lull, but his sweet hulking body settles back into sleep and snoring commences. the white noise of our overnight, he rules supreme.
dogdog wants to get a drink of water from their mutual bowl. but babycat stands over it. dogga reaches his paw out to try and drag the cat from the bowl, but babycat is firmly planted and dogga is unsuccessful. so, even though he whines with frustration and looks at us with a “do something!” plea, dogdog, at least twice the size of this supersized cat, waits. because babycat rules supreme.
and yet, even with the snoring and the bed-hogging and the torture-of-the-dog and the clear reign-of-the-house, we cannot imagine life without the babycat. his presence and the fact that he-saved-me-i-didn’t-save-him rules supreme.
“the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” (a. solzhenitsyn)
it isn’t without hesitation that i speak now of september 11, 2001. eighteen years ago today. both yesterday and an eternity ago.
there is a dividing line that is the place of before and after. in many ways, this date, september 11, 2001, marks that line. a time when, before which, we innocently and trustingly got on airplanes to fly to destinations we anticipated with great joy. a time when, before which, it didn’t occur to us to be wary in crowded places, to know how to exit, to navigate fear, let alone terror. a dividing line.
but the truth of it is, there has always been good and evil. the division has always existed. history demonstrates that evil – in all its iterations, big and small – rears up like a wild stallion, flailing at goodness, rejecting compromise.
and when i look around, at the world, at our country, at this little island microcosm, i see that our collective hearts have not learned. it saddens me to know that as my children continue to grow, adults in 2019, this has not changed.
solzhenitsyn’s quote continues: “And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”
i pray that this ‘small bridgehead of good’ will cross the dividing line and, like a snowball rolling downhill across a field of white, will grow…eventually bigger than any iteration of evil. it’s our only hope.
reverse threading 