so much to think about. the middle of the night is a mashup festival of thoughts.
sometimes our level of profundity in the night is astounding. we converse and deep dive and solve all the world’s problems, quoting nietzsche and rumi and mary oliver and john muir.
and sometimes, it is less deep, less intense, less – well – anything at all. just random. and one of us – i’m not admitting to being the one – goes on and on, pondering, pondering, pondering – all aloud – convinced the other one of us – again, no pointed fingers here – is actually listening.
meanwhile, the dogga jumps up on the end of the bed – groaning – and yawns, falling into a deep slumber, his paws running, running, running, in dreamland.
sometimes nights are forever.
*****
and, speaking of random…that reminds me of a great 70s song that has nothing to do with this because we are both right here….still, great song!
my son shares his name. it’s his middle name. wayne.
it was in the middle of my second pregnancy we lost my vastly-loved big brother. my little girl was two; my little boy not yet arrived. i had lost grandparents before that. but, somehow, despite our sadness in these losses, in their older-age, it seemed a natural part of the life cycle. my brother was different. it was today, 31 years ago. and he was merely 41, which is twenty-three years younger than i am at this moment.
though my brain somehow grasped the details of his cancer, my mind couldn’t wrap itself around how it was possible that the world could go on if he could no longer feel it. i still struggle with this. i am not naive enough to think it all ceases because of one – but the lack of the act of feeling, the passion of feeling, the tactile, the visceral of feeling – all this – it felt – no, feels – inordinately complicated to me. the full-stop. surely, in the moments i ponder this is when i realize how utterly futile it is to try and control anything, to be utterly absorbed in stuffff, to not stop and notice the tiny delicate flowers on the path.
we are reading a book together. though the actual book has nothing at all to do with this post or my brother or pausing on trails in the woods, the title – for me – is relevant: i have some questions for you.
i do, my big brother. i have some questions for you.
i know you know, bro, how adored you always were. did you take it with you? can you feel it on this other plane you are on?
i know you loved coffee ice cream, hot cups of coffee, birthday cake. are your senses as vibrant? did you smell the peonies in our backyard? can you now catch a whiff of the lavender, the mint, the basil? can you feel the sun? are you aware of the breeze – or – are you the breeze itself?
i know you loved to hear neil diamond, loved to play guitar and sing, loved to feel your hands on projects of wood. do you float in and out now, catching snatches of song, feeling the pick in your hand, hearing the scroll saw start up?
i know you loved. are you right here – loving – right now? are you right next to your wife, your beloved children and your grandchildren, and, if we could touch incandescence, the full spectrum of color, translucent gossamer, could we touch you?
i know you are not in a physical form on this earth. but are you simply unseeable? are you, in turn, coffeesitting with our mom and dad and then swooping in to somehow steadfastly drop wisdom or strength onto the rest of us?
i know you probably don’t have any questions. but i do. and, as my big brother, you will need to find a way to answer them, as i am counting on you to explain all this.
i’ll stop – wayne – at the delicate flowers in the woods. i’ll slow down and dance on the deck. i’ll try not to worry about the angst of the day-to-day. i’ll feel and i’ll drop into pause.
there are times i know you are here. there are times i know our sweet momma and poppo are here. i wish it were easier to see you.
in some kind of trust – right smack in the middle of grace and not-knowing – i do believe you are the wind.
she reached into her rainbow bag and pulled out two rainbow buttons, handing them to us. “brilliant!” i thought, while also thinking we should have brought our “be kind” buttons and given them out as well. this darling little girl, accompanied by her mom, stood in the center of the blocked-off pridefest road, twirling right and left, gifting festgoers with happy faces.
i was awake most of the night. it wasn’t until sometime after the birds began showering the rising sun with song that i fell asleep. middle-of-the-night musings often keep me awake these days. the harvard medical school reports that insomnia is present for 35% to 60% of women after menopause. i’m seriously thinking someone needs to do something about this.
so it is in those wee hours of the night i ponder everythingunderthesun. it is like my own personal pablo neruda book of questions – random, open-ended and with no real answers. all over the map, i revisit growing up, walk through previous houses, go back on vacations, have conversations all over again, list groceries, think about deferred house maintenance, slink around the edges of new creative projects, send positive energy to beloveds. i wonder about the universe answers – if they will drop in, like a sticky note from the heavens above. i list gratitudes – simple, like this tiny girl’s happy face rainbow buttons – and complex, like straddling the line of relevance. i list worries – like the day to day challenges of aging, the challenges of a world fraught with superficiality and division, the challenges of the environment, the heart-challenges of most important relationships. the one thing i do not do is sleep.
i’m pretty sure i am not necessarily capable of solving everything at 2am. and 3am is worse.
but a couple minutes after 4am – when the birds gather in our neighborhood trees and sing up the sun and its roygbiv – and i am present – that is when most of it – the kaleidoscope of life – makes sense.
i lived in florida. merely 14 miles from the gulf of mexico. for eight plus years. yet, i can count the number of times i went to the beach while i lived there. likely on two hands. i spent more time on the gulf before living there and after living there. just not during.
as a teenager and young adult i was at the north shore all the time. biking there, vw-ing there, boating, diving, fishing, walking, climbing the fence to take sunrise pictures – winter, spring, summer, fall. all the time.
in recent years i’ve yearned for the days on those long island beaches. and, though they are remarkably beautiful and warm and sunny and tan-producing (definitely not important anymore), i can’t really say the same for the florida beaches. i don’t find myself pining for them.
maybe it’s just my history with them. or, perhaps, the lack thereof.
the other day we went to the beach. on lake michigan. we walked and walked for a couple of hours, searching for hagstones and paintable flat rocks. then we settled down on a big log of driftwood in soft sand and sat and watched the waves. we wished we had a picnic lunch with us and a good book. it was that kind of day. the only thing that drove us out was hunger.
but we’ll go back, because the beauty of that beach was powerful.
when you live with someone who also likes to walk, you will walk anywhere. strolling in the ‘hood, hiking on the trail, trolling for stones on the beach. it’s the thing we do when all else stops – all work, all tasks. it’s the thing we do when we want all else to stop – all wistfulness, all thought, all worry, all out-and-out angst.
it’s funny to me that there was this big chunk of my life when i wasn’t walking, wasn’t hiking. just like this big chunk of my life when i wasn’t going to the beach – to stare at the waves, to watch gulls swoop and dive in the wind, to find the gifts of the air and the water – tuning into soul and energy, soothing and healing.
i’ve pondered, before, what would have happened had i walked. now i ponder what would have happened had i gone to the beach.
no book on menopause or post-menopause – that i have read thus far – really prepares us. i haven’t found a steponesteptwostepthree-handbook on how to sort this. the phases of a mom’s life intersect and overlap and are messy and as full of emotional upheaval as they are full of gratitudes for blissful. every piece, in my own messiness-of-this, is sticky and pulls at every other piece, like marshmallows in hot-off-the-bonfire s’mores. no matter the professional pursuit, the hobby, the exercise, the diet, the zen-yen, it is all interwoven with the loss of mom-identity, the constant babystep-by-babystep redefining of relationship with one’s children and one’s self.
of early days of motherhood, anne morrow lindbergh in “gift from the sea” wrote essays sparked by seashells, “eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.” she is the “still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations, and activities.” in a metaphoric nod to the shell argonauta, anne paints the picture of the mother argonaut floating to the surface and releasing the young, then floating away to a new life. sailors, she says, consider this shell “a sign of fair weather and favorable winds”. yet, she muses, “what does the open sea hold for us? we cannot believe that the second half of life promises ‘fair weather and favorable winds’.”
it is a total reorientation. it takes time to re-find the center of gravity. true center. even with a child of 32 and a child of 29, i find this not to have been or be instantaneous. one does not click off the light-switch, or touch the base of the 1980s brass touch-on-touch-off lamp, turning off the questions of identity. it’s the yarn of a new cape, from mom (and all the other titles) to woman (and all the other titles).
“whether we’re talking about giving up baby clothes, toys, artwork or schoolwork, the issue is not mere sentimentality. it’s about letting go of our children. […] we think that keeping all of those things will let us keep a little of each child who left us.” (claire middleton – “the sentimental person’s guide to decluttering”) i would guess that, even in my intentional attempts to set wind for their sails, my children would cite my fierce hanging-on to them. at the least, they would attest to my quiet weeping at their leaving, each time they leave.
i clean out the house, clean out one thread of four decades of career, glance at my piano – always whispering to me “don’t forget this is who you are too”. i write, i cartoon, i write more. and then, more. i think about composing – new simple feathers of music, pieces that would float in breezes and find center. i sit in quiet. i wonder.
is this an identity crisis?
“but there are other beaches to explore. there are more shells to find. this is only a beginning.” (anne morrow lindbergh)
we can see the shadows getting longer. earlier in the day, the sun is lower in the sky and fall is on the rise. the wistful-autumn-thing is starting. picking apples and going to the pumpkin farm are on our list-of-things-to-do and i’m pulling out soup recipes, planning ahead. i’m hoping the cherry tomato plants will sustain longer. and the valentino basil has rejuvenated; dinner last night was red pesto pasta – thanks to this very plant. we need to order some wood and i’m keeping my eye out for the perfect mums. and socks made a cameo appearance the other day. blue jeans and boots, the stuff of happiness, are itching their way back into our world, having been buried under summer and no-airconditioning wear. i love fall. and nothing stops the melancholy.
we didn’t sleep again. i’m writing this on wednesday, so last night – tuesday night – was a long wakefulness with a smidge of dozing around 6am. i was aware that i was feeling anxious, worried. no amount of tossing and turning helped. once you are traveling down that road, there are no u-turns. i watched the shadows change in the room, listened to the rain, rearranged my pillows a time or a hundred times. insomnia is a resolute challenger. and, in the middle of the night, every question you have ever perseverated over, ever pondered, that has ever even remotely teased you for an answer is present and accounted for, lined up, waiting for answers or action plans. meanwhile, any even breathing of your spouse, and even the dog, wreak havoc with your impulse control.
the coffee this morning tasted especially good. the day is grey, though the sun is supposed to appear this afternoon. i wrote in my calendar, as i do each day, and was, once again, flabbergasted that it’s just shy of the end of september. equinox as i write and tomorrow we fall deeper into fall. equal parts of darkness and light on this day. that might explain my lack of sleep – equal parts of dark and light – the chiaroscuro of the wee hours – when we would rather languish in light, literally and metaphorically.
a year ago today my daughter facetimed me from the top of a 14’er. it was a scramble to the top, rocky and treacherous. and then, there she was. 14,000 feet up, in the sun, sunlight bathing her radiant face. she panned the camera around so i could see the vastness of it all. mountains and canyon and brilliant uninterrupted light and deep shadow. an equinox perhaps by calendar, but overtaken in any soul-sense by the gleaming luminescence of arriving at the summit.
we each have our own personal night-shadows, building blocks of angst and anxiety, dark caverns filled with life events and life decisions and being wronged and wronging. morning usually helps. it’s when what is real-now shows itself in three-dimension and that which is shadow fades just a bit. the existential questions of the night shrink ever-so-slightly. we look at our to-do lists and pencil in time to take a walk, to hike, to feel the sun on our faces.
we know – despite the neverending pondering of the night – that the questions matter less than the moments. we have learned it time and again – watching the cycle of life, sand running through our fingers, holding mica in our hands. we will, undoubtedly, learn it again.
we know we can make it to the top of each mountain. the equal or unequal division of darkness and light will not stop us. and neither will the shadows. each step counts. we put our faces to the sun and get on with it.
on island we rarely heard airplanes overhead. if we did, they were small cessnas and pipers, low-wing and high-wing single engine airplanes, buzzing over the shoreline heading for the small grass strip airport. otherwise, it was quiet. very.
lately, here, we have noticed that it is quieter than normal. we are in what is generally an approach for the milwaukee airport and we often see airplanes overhead heading north or airplanes coming across the lake in line for o’hare, south of us. it seems more of a rarity now to hear a jet overhead. it makes us pay attention. it makes us look up. it makes us ponder.
we wonder where it is coming from, where its final destination. we wonder how many passengers are on board. in these times of no-travel, the contrail seems a contradiction of this time, a plane leaving its mark on the day.
in my previous life i had some time at the controls of both small airplanes and helicopters. the jargon was language i was accustomed to. there are languages of career. we all have them, words, expressions, theories specific to our chosen work; we learn our spouse’s language, even just enough to understand just enough.
i’m better at the controls than in the passenger seat of a small airplane; motion sickness rules less if you are ‘driving’. i never got near the point of solo-ing on any flying machine. there was much to learn in ground school and hours rented on an airplane or a helicopter were expensive for an already-stretched budget. but, stick in hand, flying a helicopter over the woods of new hampshire while employed at an aviation college there, brilliant new england fall colors beneath us, i could see how the flying-bug could bite.
and now it is quiet. a few moments ago, while writing this, a jet flew overhead. i stopped typing to pay attention and looked out the window. i wondered: where is that plane going? who is on that plane? do they feel safe? are they wearing masks? did they turn their blower off? are they sitting six feet apart?
and i pondered: what state might that plane be flying here from? what are the covid-19-numbers in that state? are people staying safe-at-home? are there protests in that state, people who are placing everyone in their ever-widening concentric circles at risk for contagion? are there people who are laissez-faire-individualizing this global-everyone-is-affected-pandemic, rejecting commonsense social distancing and simple respectful preventative measures? are there people making homemade masks, like here, because there isn’t enough PPE to go around? are they wondering why the federal government of fifty states and five territories is hostage-taking necessary supplies, pitting governors against each other, encouraging a competition for lifesaving devices, blaspheming good works, eliminating knowledgeable workers, warping what is important vs not important, encouraging bracing and dangerous practices? are they shocked and dismayed at the ever-widening inequity, the gross partisanship? are they stunned into disbelief at the absolute lack of sane and measured leadership? are they embarrassed and profoundly saddened?
and i wondered: when will we go on an airplane next? where will we go? when will we feel safe? will everyone wear a mask? will everyone sit six feet apart?
and i thought, as we are apt to do after-the-fact: i should have gotten my pilot’s license.
dogdog sits at the edge of the lake and gazes south. i wonder what he is pondering. south is where home-home is. south is where his backyard is, where he runs in gleeful circles when the dachshunds next door are out in their yard. south is where he goes on extended errands in the scion, where unka john comes over, where the upstairs gives babycat space from him and for him. south is where he barks and rules the domain that is clearly his.
i wonder what he is thinking. is he wondering what it all means? is he curious about when he will be home-home next? is he wondering where we are now? does he like this location, full of wildlife he hasn’t seen before? does he like the smaller space, putting us four all together more? does he like the treat he and babycat get every time we arrive home, the “mom-and-dad-are-home-treat”? does he like to fall into dreams at “sleepynightnight” time in his familiar crate in a mostly unfamiliar place, next to our bed as usual?
babycat was slower to adjust. his adjustment came under the bed in the middle room, as he sorted through his “where-the-heck-are-we-and-did-anyone-ask-me-if-i-wanted-to-come?” eventually he came out from under the bed and started finding that, yes indeedy, there is a bed with the quilt he recognizes that he can sleep on. and yes, indeedy, “they” brought my favorite toy, the turbo-scratcher-round-circle-chasing-ball toy. and yes, indeedy, it’s a different food bowl, but it’s the same food. he has discovered that he can sit by the french door to the deck and watch seagulls and ducks and geese and bald eagles flying past and above. it’s work but someone has to do it, and babycat is all-in. yes, all is seemingly well in babycat land now.
adjustments are a bit easier when your unicorn toy and bones and treats and chasing-toy and leash and kibble are there, are the same.
i, too, have sat on the edge of the lake and gazed south.
it comes in waves. in less than two weeks i will be 60. i’m not a consumed-with-my-age-person, but this particular birthday is proving me different. without any prompts, i find myself sorting through my life, the six decades that lead me to right now. memories flow in and ebb out like the tide on a surfboard of emotions. trying not to resist, i ride the wave as it brings me growing up times on long island…my nuclear family all together, all alive, gathered in our dining room on abby drive or up in the catskills in a rustic state park cabin….bike hikes and carvel….simple times of arguing for john denver over bob dylan….time walking or sitting or playing frisbee on crab meadow beach…late sunday morning mc-arnson sandwiches or waffles and ice cream around my sweet momma and poppo’s table in florida…the time of building the first home i ever bought, a big choice for us as a young couple…the sheep farm in new hampshire….moving to wisconsin away from family and the challenges that raised…celebrating the amazing birth of our daughter and son and watching them grow into the people they are….recording my first album and what that meant….letting go of the day-to-day mothering as my children became adults and still being an every-single-day mother….balancing the impact of good decisions and bad decisions….times of intense grief….choosing love….starting over….wondering what is coming next….
the inner monologue chronicles through all of these years…i sit in quiet watching the slideshow in my mind’s eye and ponder. what was most important, what is most important, what will be most important. what it all means. and it’s clear most of the time. the people who have surrounded me, who have loved me, who i have loved. the people i am missing – and will always miss – as well as the people who are right here. the times i am missing – as well as the times -moments- i could miss right now were i to be too engrossed in something else.
on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART, the track that i selected to follow MISSING is called CONNECTED. because it all stays a part of the vast ocean that is each of our lives. the missing and the now and the wondering, all part of the whole. all waves to ride.
i visit this place everyday. the place of contemplation. of pondering. of remembering. of dreaming. of silent conversational prayer. this morsel of david’s painting CONTEMPLATION speaks to me and my need to sometimes go inside…to sort, to be grateful, to relinquish a hold on something negative, to wonder.
SOFTLY SHE PRAYS
there is a similar painting, based on a similar image…called SOFTLY SHE PRAYS and i adore this for its monochromatic approach, its gentle existence. conversely, this piece CONTEMPLATION is filled with color – the colors of life and vibrance, saturated with the palette we live in every day, the colors we don’t always notice as we walk by, missed in our efforts to move into the next moment. ahh. yet another reason to sit and rest and contemplate.
reverse threading 