“…no one can tell us because life is not something which can be understood from a book…” (krishnamurti)
when my big brother died almost 27 years ago, my world tilted, never to return to the same again. i struggled to understand that this amazingly smart, talented, witty man – someone i depended on my whole life – was no longer going to be in this world. losing him left me with a lot of questions.
ever since then i have not been able to wrap my head around how the world keeps going if you cannot feel it anymore. and yet, each loss i have experienced is evidence that is exactly what happens. the world keeps going. it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
there is no handbook available to explain all this. life’s complicated layers and sideroads, the junctures where we choose left or right, the places we decide to stop or go…it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
nearly every day there is some world-tilting reminder to wholeheartedly embrace the moment you are in; nearly every day we forget. it’s not as easy as just remembering. it’s not easily understood. your shoes are not my shoes and, although it is easy for me to sense all the concurrent emotions in a room, i still cannot grasp what you are actually going through. my sun could be your rain. it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
so we try. we try to understand, without instruction, the strands and tattered fragments and shiny-mica-bits that weave together into life. mostly, we keep feeling life. and the world keeps going.
my poppo was staunch about a few things. tires, brakes and windshield wipers were three of them. not only staunch, he was particular; his tire brand of choice (for him and for anyone he loved) was without-a-doubt-michelin. and so, with the exception of the time i had a tire blow out on a highway far from home, on a sunday, with no specialty tire store open, i have always bought michelins.
we’ve sat at kenosha tire many times, really for every vehicle: the vw, the minivans, the jeeps, the xb. having new tires mounted or a tire fixed or having all four rotated, they are courteous, informative, and speedy. i never truly mind waiting for something like this to be done; i love to watch people so i stay amused most of the time.
this establishment has been there since 1970. it’s not a fancy place; there’s a variety of chairs, a variety of plaques with sponsored-team pictures, a variety of tire samples and tire signs and a large screen tv. sometimes there’s a dog or two and i suspect maybe there is a cat back in that office with the counter-level swinging door. this is a family business and their dedication not only to their customers but also to the community is obvious. i always feel like they listen to me; i always trust them.
before we went out west, we had our tires rotated…i could hear my dad nagging, er, reminding me all the way from heaven. on the wall next to my chair was this sign. the four-way test of the things we think, say or do printed on rotary international paper. it struck me as a simple tool…something to help frame our thoughts, the things we blurt out or defiantly or unthinkingly state, the things we do that have the potential to hurt others.
it is clear to me that kenosha tire values people. it is clear that they support their community. and now it is clear to me that they found this simple guide to kindness was important enough to put on the wall. we should all have a wallet-sized copy to which we can refer.
i’m betting my dad would be pretty staunch about using this shop to buy our tires. kindness in business was another one of those things he was pretty particular about.
as a matter of fact, i’m also willing to bet that, other than 2x4s, i-beams, sheetrock and maybe shiplap, this is the only wall-related-discussion he’d be interested in.
in the 1972 choral piece IT IS GOOD by Jack Normain Kimmell and Adrian Swets, there are these lyrics: “…and the Lord saw the work of His hand and said, “it is good.”
this painting morsel – and the painting WEEPING MAN in its entirety – make me think of this piece of music. the universe. this earth. this country. this community. this family. this life of yours. this life of mine.
regardless of what you believe about how THIS all came to be, regardless of your view of THIS – in an historic way or a spiritual way or even regarding the contemporary state of affairs, THIS all exists. for each of us. it isn’t always good. it isn’t always not-good.
there are those moments. the moments you weep openly, the moments you cover your face to cry, the moments of overwhelm, the moments of absolute weariness that, despite all evidence to the contrary in your tired mind and body, actually do lead to Next. times you feel alone, times of sorting, times of grief, times of fragile vulnerability, times of regret. the times you put your face in your hands and weep…
and there are those moments. the moments you weep openly, the moments you cover your face to cry, the moments of stunning awe, the moments of sheer exhaustion at your goal-line, moments that actually do lead to Next. times you feel enamored of life itself, times of incredulity, times of unquestionable good fortune, times of serendipity, times of simple all-consuming sweet love. the times you put your face in your hands and weep…
AND SO HE WEEPS – we recognize it. we can feel it. and we know that in another moment he -or she, for there is no pronoun-hogging here- will slowly raise his head out of his hands and Next will have arrived.
on my nightstand next to the bed are two frames. both written in little-kid-writing, they are notes i saved from long ago. one is from My Girl and it reads, “goodnight mom” surrounded by hearts. the other is from My Boy and it has two words on it, “craig” (with a backwards g) and “mom” and has hearts filling up the rest of the notepaper. each night i see these as i wish them both, from far away, goodnight, sweet dreams, restful sleep.
i come by this threadiness honestly.
we were in florida visiting; two of the days we were there, despite bright sunlight and temperatures in the 80s, we spent in a storage unit. what was left of my parents’ belongings was packed in boxes, stacked in a unit, waiting for us to put our eyes on all of it and decide what to do with each of these things. my mom’s impulse was to keep things, especially paper. photographs and slides aside, there were files and files – some of which we will wade through later. there were boxes of mugs and baskets and trinkets, a kaleidoscope of the pieces of life, carefully packed by my sister and brother-in-law during a time of sadness, a time that was not ripe with paring down or organizing, a time that is difficult for anyone who has packed up a house. larger items were already distributed – furniture given away or passed down to the next generation. but these boxes….
i was quite sure that, even if i hadn’t seen anything in any of the boxes, i had all i needed….my treasures of my sweet momma and my poppo are tucked in close to my heart and i have physical memories of them around me in our home. they are not the high-priced treasures you might think people would save or claim. instead, they are small, meaningful, invaluable and thready things that speak to me. old calendars of my mom’s, my dad’s small rickety wooden boxes from his workbench, glasses from which my dad sipped his scotch, a flannel shirt my mom wore that matched my dad’s, a board with hooks that is wood-burned with the word “keys” and hung in our growing-up house for as long as i can remember…
spending time in the storage unit, surrounded by memories and the fading scent of my mom’s perfume and their house, i was heartened to see that i actually could go through and pare down. it gives me hope about our own basement. the real things of our past – sweet treasured memories – are not things. everyone gets meaning from and sees value in different stuff. two days in the storage unit reminded me again of that.
this time i didn’t cry. i laughed with my momma, who, no doubt, was rolling her eyes in heaven over the fact that she had saved sooo many pieces of paper…paid bills, old house contracts, warranties from appliances long gone, car receipts from several cars ago. a collection of life gone by, i know she smiled when every now and then we stumbled onto something i loved to touch….i kept the little scrap of paper that fluttered to the floor that my mom had written my full birth name on…i kept a couple calendars with my poppo’s handwriting…i kept a tiny folder of maps my mom collected in her curiosity about the changing world…i kept my dad’s brown suede cap, the one i bought him a million years ago…i kept a manila folder of letters i had written to them over the years – that my momma saved…these pieces of evidence of who they were, heirlooms of what was most important to them.
i vowed, once again, to go through, give away, sell the things in our own home that are not necessary. but those bins in the basement labeled “kirsten” and “craig”? those will stay. i will delight in going through the artwork and stories and notes and school projects from their childhood and growing up. and some day, maybe they too will see how infinitely important each of the baby steps and adult steps they have taken are to me. and maybe some of the thready treasures i have left behind will give them pause and, maybe, they will save a scrap or two, a calendar, a notebook of unpublished songs, photographs, something that reminds them of what was most important to me – the thready things that are memories of love, of family, of them.
it wasn’t sunny or 82 degrees inside the storage unit. but it was warm in a whole other way.
i went back to take this picture. i’m not quite sure why, but the word “loop” on the steps struck me as funny. truth be told, it was a piece of information; on the metra steps in chicago it was directing us to the train that would take us toward the loop.
there was this time we visited My Boy in chicago. we took the train down, got off at the ravenswood stop, and walked what seemed-like-miles dragging a rollie-bag behind us with all the ingredients for pasta and homemade sauce. after a fun day together, we dragged our now-empty suitcase back to the train and waited on the platform for the train home, unwittingly sitting on the wrong side of the platform. it was a mere two minutes before the train came that we realized our error and ran down the stairs, down the sidewalk, across the street against the traffic light and back up the other set of stairs to the right platform. it was comical, i’m sure. we couldn’t even pretend to be cool-calm-collected-experienced-aloofly-confident passengers. we were total geeks, running for the train, laughing. i’m sure there were signs (we saw them our next trip down) but we hadn’t noticed. and so, the word “loop” on the steps made me laugh. “northbound” on the steps would have helped.
music-in-its-written-form is kind of like this. there are directions all over the place: repeat signs, time signatures, words like coda, DC al fine, DS. it’s a confusing mess for the newbie. our ukulele band navigates this all the time now; we use lead sheets in lieu of just chord-and-lyric sheets. we cheer each time we end the song at the same place and at the same time. for the seasoned musician, these directions are run-of-the-mill; for the music editor, these directions save a lot of space and paper. for the ukulele band, which now pays attention to these bits of directive material, it’s like writing “loop” on the steps.
it’s all just one big lesson in following directions, isn’t it? i guess the key is laughter.
“…sometimes you just need some space in between. a few moments to think.” (liner notes)
time to sort, to ponder. a breath. in music, it’s used in between verses and choruses, a time for an instrumental, a time for a pause in lyrics, a pause for thought.
right now feels like an interlude. space that is falling between the verses, it’s quieter with more pondering. it’s a time of figuring out, a time of ‘what’s next?’ not every interlude is comfortable, but that space in a piece of music, in life, is a time that can be rich.
as mozart said, “the music is not in the notes but in the silence in between.”
at the beginning and the end of the movie LOVE ACTUALLY are these really fantastic scenes of people coming together, vignettes of greeting each other, hugging and kissing. a warm feel-good movie anyway, these scenes are the reasons i love to go to the airport. i love to watch people…in their excitement about travel, in their absolute joy in seeing someone they have missed. we have our own airport stories…of meeting and coming back together, of skipping and champagne, seconds and minutes memorized for all time.
we spent a little bit of time in airports this past week. we people-watched, wondering about each person’s story, where they were going, where they were from, what was in their heart. we watched children run to loved ones upon seeing them; we watched couples embrace.
for a little while, with a late-evening departure, we sat at one of the bars at the milwaukee airport (which, incidentally, also makes me think of the movie LOVE ACTUALLY – you must see this if you haven’t already!)
we had promised gay and dan and jay and charlie and sandysue that we would bowl with our new christmas-crackers-bowling-set, and we had no intention of going back on our promise. so we painstakingly set it up and struggled to hold onto the tiny ball. giggling, we bowled at the bar, the bartender thinking for sure we had lost it.
sometimes you just have to be goofy. it makes people deep in thought around you laugh. what’s better than that? it’s not the opening or closing scenes of LOVE ACTUALLY but it, too, elicits smiles.
here, a teaser from the movie:
ps. you can borrow our bowling set anytime. just message us.
remember when you carefully wrapped your toddler’s presents, expecting their absolute glee when he or she opened the gift? and then, moments after the gift was opened, with wrappings and gift cast aside, you found them ecstatically playing with the box the gift came in? well, welcome to babycatworld.
b-cat has lots of toys. we struggle with keeping dogdog from devouring them. we gave him fun new things for christmas, but he doesn’t seem all that interested. however, the moment we put a carry-your-stuff-out-box we used at costco on the floor in the kitchen, babycat decided it was his. no matter where we move it, he sits in it. he has claimed it; it is his safe spot. it would be impossible for him to lay down in it; his hulking “big-boned” body dwarfs the box. but sitting in it seems to suffice for him. i guess everyone/every creature has their special spot. so for now, this crest box has become a part of our home.
i might add that it doesn’t match our decor in any way. i’m wondering if he would still sit in it if we spray-painted it black…
“…leaving to fill in the space called the future…”
yesterday is but a shadow now. we rise with the sun and the lingering shadows and shapes in the dusk-then-darkness-then-dawn quietly disappear. we can’t hold onto them, any of them, despite our sometimes-longing to do so. memories are like that. the moments we most want to remember…they slyly tiptoe out of our mind’s eye, elusive to our heart-threads trying to hold onto them. that is why i keep a calendar.
my calendar is written. with a pencil. every day i write in it, catching up what we did with our time, what we worked on, where we went, who we saw, maybe a new recipe we tried. mostly, though, i write down moments i don’t want to forget. milliseconds or minutes of bliss with a loved one, gorgeous things said, handholds or hugs that i want to keep feeling, things i want to memorize but know will slip softly into a recess that i may or may not be able to access.
on the first day of the new year (or the last day of the old year) it is my ritual to read every day, every log, of my year’s calendar. in that reading we are transported. to the places we went, the people we visited with, the exquisite times, the arguments, treasured mom-moments that have repeated-time-release joy. we remember things we had forgotten. we stand once again on the precipice above the canyon or the beach on the cape. we stroll once again under a canopy of spanish-moss-covered live oaks or the big sky of the high range mountains. we sit once again on red rocks or on the train to chicago or on the subway in boston or on the pontoon boat up north or on the high kitchen stools having potluck friday or on the raft or at the pub near where we scattered ashes one last time. we hike once again in the nearby woods, on the river trail, through high desert. we roadtrip, once again, heading east, west, south, north. we have conversation-snippets-to-remember once again with The Girl, The Boy, david’s parents, our siblings, nieces, nephews, dear friends. once again, we make music and art, we write stories and blogposts and press releases and letters and emails and texts; some we want to hold onto, even if just a word or two, a sentiment or two. once again.
we process our year. we see. we celebrate. we learn. we plan and we plan to not plan. we dream. we look to the future.
