On Writing and Babies

She asked, “are you a writer?”

…

I never thought of myself as a writer. For me, writing was a shelter. The lines and curves of letters gave shape to the empty, lonely spaces outside of and within myself. Writing was less of a discipline and more of a companion, a connection to myself, my remembered past, my perceived present, my imagined future.

“…I have been so happy,” I replied.  

And this was the truth. I grew happy. Those dense, contemplative spaces softened over time, unfolding like magnolias succumb to the warm April sun. The lines and curves were not so necessary. 

Love did this for me; the steady kind of love that is more parts patience and humility than romance and excitement. Marriage, mountains, and salt water did this for me. Being closer to family, Abe and Junie, and good work eased those lonely parts in me. 

And I am still so happy. However, I see and hear at the edges, in the corners a familiar thing. Fear, shadows, lonely bits never quite leave us, even as we stand in so much light. 

And so I do what I know has worked before. I write. I dig a new tunnel within myself with shovels and lines and a heart-beat cursor. 

The specialist labeled it with unfamiliar medical terms that simply mean my body cannot quite make a baby, without money and medication, a manufactured conception. Or a miracle. I am clumsy with this truth. I am not graceful with generous optimism or complimentary advice. I crawl through, and mostly around, honesty. 

I anticipated waiting, longing; this is how I have lived much of my life, late blooming.  Longing can be both a holy devotion and damning obsession. And most days are quiet, filled with work rackets, dirty dishes, master degrees, distractions. 

However, waiting is grief, filling in any empty space or time. Felt most in the little deaths of the imaginary life I create when I let my mind wander and dream, when I let my mind free.

The joyful telling of family. 
The picture in my mind of a swelling belly. 
The grainy radio heartbeats and shadowy silhouettes of images and  promises.
The growing and becoming. 
The tantrums and the lullabies. 

This is all my imagination, but this is the closest I come. 

The closest I come to you. 

For now. 

You who will be a little slice of heaven on earth. You who will exhaust me with touch and snot and sound, who will be both my doing and undoing. You who will be laughter, color, bone, and wonder. 

I think I love you now, and I will surely love you then. You will be my greatest and favorite wait. Even if there are a million little heartbreaks in between. Brokenness always makes more room. The grief, both holy and unholy, is all I have of you. 

For now. 

I write to hold you. In the lines and curves and broken heart-beat cursors, love letters. I write for you.

Firefly

(From Drafts – December 2015)

Cora, I know you feel sad today…eating alone, eating that soup at Panera. The bowl you reluctantly ordered because you needed to challenge your food habits. Whatever. I get it. I know you are sad.

I know, when you opened those grey blue eyes this morning, you were sad to wake up alone. Again. I know you want a full bed, a husband and kids, wild with Saturday, furious snuggle spirits cascading into your body, into your heart, into your bed with the power of a child’s reckless river soul.

I know you could smell the pancakes your neighbor was flipping on her griddle, and you wished for your own little mouths to feed. Because you are learning to feed your own, to eat pancakes and bread again, you want to share. You want to feed, to nourish, to giggle as syrup drips from your little boy’s lips. Cora, you are free to dream, to desire…even when this feels absurd.

I know you think your wonky bits are being held together with chunky peanut butter, hairspray, Zoloft and the Holy Ghost. I know you think this makes you irritable, impossible, unpredictable. Truth be told, you are a little of all three, which can be quite charming, but these things do not make you unlovable, these thing certainly do not disqualify you from being a lover, a sister, a mother, and a friend.

You are learning how to live beyond your human-brain expectations, which hobble along with disorder. You are learning to kiss your deepest sorrows and disappointments; you are asking for more peach cobbler. You are saying stop and no without your most faithful companion, Shame. You are beginning to appreciate the way you cry about EVERYDAMNTHING. Cora, my darling, you are learning how to celebrate, to feel the sweeping motion of joy on your lips as they spread into a smile. You survived this year, kiddo; you survived! And, I think, you might just be thriving beyond it all.

And you know all of this is not only for you. All of the heartbreak and uncertainty and joy and sadness and resistance are for everyone you know. Because, all of this life is scraps really…beautiful, sparkling universe crumbs colliding into brief human lives, and they are held together with chunky peanut butter, hairspray, Zoloft, and the Holy Ghost. And Cora, you are here to help; so, please stop hiding.

You are all right.
Today, you are all right.
And that growing joy is lighting you up, a firefly with that little glowing bum illuminating dark nights. And when you open those grey blue eyes tomorrow morning, be sad and be glad, too, because the earth has spun around the sun and danced with the moon.

Pretzel Day

Two years ago, you were shuffling around my kitchen in the little white house on Woodland Drive, making something your mother made you when you were young, bringing your past into our present on a Tuesday night in February. You let me sit and finish case notes, while you took care of me. Seems to me that is what you have been doing since, taking care of me. Little by little, thing by thing, meal by meal, tear by tear, taking care of me, and I am thankful.

I cannot remember exactly when I knew I loved you. I do know when I shook your hand at the front desk, in front of Theo and Al, I figured I would fall for you. I figured that I would love you, which seems so silly to say. But then I did, easily and peacefully, sometime between rambling up a mountain in Madison County with your client in search of a cemetery and walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway through Craggy Gardens, meandering in the cold with Abe. Sometime in between, I loved you. So, when I turned to see you, knee to the sand where Sherrill Street meets the sea, asking will you marry me, I was thankful because it felt so peaceful, so easy.

Certainly, we have not always been the best for one another, and we will not always be, but we can remind ourselves of what we are made, breakfasts and laughter and long walks and failures and hope. At least, I believe I will try to remember the good and the bad. I will try, and I will keep falling for you, again and again.

Like the steady climb on up to Purchase, this is what loving you has been and I hope this is what loving you will always be: the relentless rise of the road, the path off by the waterfall and into the thick grove of trees, the wild flowered fields, and finally, the depth of view from the porch of the old Science Center. I hope we are so lucky to have years and years of climbing and seeing and holding hands and being.

I love you thiiisss much.
I look forward to you. I can’t wait for you. I love you, Drew.

You are my pretzel day.

 

Goldfish

When I saw her, I was popping multi-colored goldfish crackers (those are my favorite) in my car: arms pumping two small weights, her legs marched, beside a snow-covered sidewalk. She was on the road, oblivious to on-coming traffic. I wondered how she was staying warm in a pair of blackish sweatpants and a thin blue hooded sweater. She was so, so thin.

As I waited at the red light, I remembered her. Not in the way of having known her personally, but I remembered her in myself. That focused stare. That dogged relentless resolve. That obsession and compulsion. I wondered if her soul ate at itself when she was forced to stay inside, away from her gym or her sidewalk when the snow was unyielding. I wondered how many squats and pushups she did in the small rectangle of her home to make up for it all. I wondered if she was sad or lonely or frustrated or angry. I wondered if she was just normal and happy and leisurely walking with weights on an ice-cold afternoon.

The light went green, and I turned left. She went on, and I popped more goldfish, forgetting about her until I stared at myself in the mirror last night, one of my hobbies. I remembered how I used to pinch the back of my arms; I was convinced this would let my arm fat know I was angry with it for spreading so wide across the side of my body, thereby forcing it to quit. I remembered the attention and joy and approval of being thin, beautiful. I remembered the obsession. And honestly, I missed her. I miss her a lot.

I was never prouder of myself than when I was skinny.

Honest.

To reconcile all of this in the era of empowerment and body positivity is tough; I guess the reconciliation is not my task, not now at least. I recognized this is a privileged experience; I have time, money, and space to be obsessed with myself. Nonetheless, the obsession is a tyrant. I still shy away from conversations about bodies. I am always a little scared but always a little hopeful that ruthless drive will return. I hate her, and I miss her. Most days.

But today, I’m popping goldfish. And I’m ok.

Salvation

I was sitting at supper, flanked by two children who each have wallowed their way into a deep, uncharted part of my heart. I was rounding out the day with a family who has become my own, after birthday celebrating and catching up and laughing and drinking coffee. I was feeling flat out happy to be alive, to be breathing and to be seeing and laughing, again. I was wading through the effervescent warmth of love and fear, the needed friction of a life, caught up in a strange sadness to be leaving them, to be going back to a world that feels a little wild and messy and unknown, a world that isn’t quite home.

And then, the littler one, that blonde headed cackler, looked me in the eye and said,

I have a schecret to tell you.

You do?

She pulled my cheek to her chin and whispered,

I lobsh you.

I love you.

I love you, too.

And I had to sit still for just a second, to catch the breath that carried salvation on the whisper of a child. I had to listen for the sacred to settle at the very bottom of my toes, because I was, in that moment, bathing in some voice of the Divine.

In the same way, I felt salvation in the acres beside my home, in the warmth of an afternoon sun slipping from a sky while I walked with Abe through a field. Simple, warm, beautiful, home. I could feel the gratitude of a particular deliverance wade through me.

In these moments, I wonder about salvation. I wonder about God. If you have known me well over the past two years, you have watched me lose a faith so enmeshed in my personhood I seem to have lost my very self.

And, perhaps, this has been my greatest salvation. I have been silently angry, uncertain, apathetic, agnostic, and when all of that would leak out, I was apologetic, even repentant…because I did not value the doubt enough to give her space to breathe, to let her live, to let her grow.

These things we hide, these things we fear, they always find a way to be known.

So, when I felt love on the whisper of a three year old and in the warmth of the sun, I was surprised when I thought of Jesus, a being who I knew to bend toward the human, who no one else would, and hold the unknown again and again, and whispered, always, I love you.

I thought of the way true redemption rushes, like the light of the sun, into that which screams to be known but is hidden or abandoned or left alone. I thought of the way salvation is impulsive and compulsive to those who choose to be honest.

To me the courage of the whisper, the courage of the sun is proximity; we must come close, so close, that we touch the objects of our fear. We tend to spend our days drafting distance, to produce some sense of safety. However, we neglect the things, which need a whisper, which need the light the most; those scary, angry, ugly things, those sad, restless, painful things.

We can, continue, every day, for the rest of our lives to move away from those spaces. But perhaps to live, to really live is to seek, to find, and then to bend into those darkened hidden hollows and whisper on the very brow of the unknown.

And then, to move, to grow, to go close with the light of the fearless whisper…I love you.

I lobsh you.

Ladybugs

I live in a house full of ladybugs.

They spend their days climbing up my white cotton blinds, moving on up toward heaven, clinging to the windowpanes, bellies to the sunshine. I spend most of the time in the shower saving them after they have hurled themselves into the collected pool of water at my feet.

I hate to watch tiny things die.
But I watched one survive tonight.

Back to the ground, little legs clawing at the air, she pushed with those thin fragile flap wings, and she flipped herself over. Her body, her very architecture, her nature kept her alive.

I work in a world of ladybugs, resilient little creatures whose lives are full of promise and guts and shit and courage, whose childhoods have been robbed, whose feet have never been washed. I see them, belly up, using what they’ve got to find the right side of gravity again. I watch them, watch the struggle, watch the fear, watch the fight, watch the victory and the cost. I get to offer what I can, but mostly, I let them feel their own strength, their own tenacity.

I see the way they move, their architecture and their nature, toward life.
I suppose we are all flipping and flailing, finding earth beneath our feet.

I think of the way I have felt my own back to the ground, the way my skin sometimes feels like a husk around an immovable darkness. I think of the way upside down feels, and I think I have done a lot of living on my back, thrashing around like a capsized ladybug. I have seen girls with razor raked arms, refusing to eat, sitting beside my body, wrecked with a binge and a purge. I have seen friends lose babies, lose mothers, lose homes. I have seen myself lose hope. I have seen cars slam into walls and bullets into bodies. I have felt displaced and confused, lost. I have felt overturned.

And yet, somehow, my architecture, my nature is beginning to expand again, to hope, to breathe, and I am feeling myself lifted, returned, restored.

Every day, we turn ourselves over with what we have been given. All of that raw life material moves in rhythm with some miracle, some mystery, pulsing toward life. We are breathing, beckoned toward something pushing our flap wings out and into life.

I say listen, feel, breathe; let your very nature, your very architecture be the saving thing. We are strong little creatures, pulsing and aching and loving, carrying beautiful hieroglyphs on our backs from the places where we have lain.

Ladybugs alive.

Commuters

Commuters on a train,
we watch a man murdered on the street from our seats
again. Again,
safely, we roll by capturing blurry imaged manuscripts
of his body exhaling one last time

. ….

…  ………

..

.

 

Erupting on our phones
because THIS IS OUR CITY,
THIS IS OUR HOME!
So, tell me, murder and riots and danger finally make us aware of our own?

Pharisees on street corner media,
posting our prayers like
salutations to the irrepressible swell of guilt seeping inside our guts.

Because, we know our sons will likely never encounter the same but
could rape a woman behind a dumpster simply because he can
again. Again.

Privilege,
that relentless, filthy indifference
to any human broken for the sake of gain,
to any human burned, beaten, abused, then raised as a banner to ease our shame.

We are commuters on a train,
safely watching a murdered man’s blood leak on the street from our seats again.
Again, we roll by,
blood on our hands.

stars

I stand under the night sky. Two feet on Dominican soil, thin rubber soles between. I wonder how my fingers would feel to reach up and scoop the stars from a leaking sky, light dripping holes in the darkness. They would never fit in my pocket, even my two blue eyes struggle to stretch wide and far enough to hold them.

I feel so small inside these skin walls, which hold my belly to my bones to my soul.

I feel so small when I see you, little one. Arms wide while you smile, star teeth shining between your dark brown lips, your dark brown skin, you reach up to me like the ache in my belly reaches for love. I pull you up, into me. You are growing, and I am stilled by the surprise in my muscles responding to you.

Good morning, I say, as if we are familiar, as if I lived in your batey and you see me every day. You are sassy, little one. What have you seen since I saw you seven months ago? Through what have your growing feet walked? Are the other kids sweet in Cabeza de Toro? Do you have enough to eat? What do you love? Tell me all.

There is one full year of growing inside of you since the first time I held you through your first day of school. Your life is shooting up out of the soil of your soul like the sugar cane lining your long road home. You are bigger, all of you, your bones, your memories, your fingers, your nose.

I am holding you on the same morning I am holding scary words from my very best friend. She is sick, baby girl; she is so sick. The doctors think cancer; my mom had cancer too, and these things wreck us all in such strange ways. This makes me feel so small, little one, so sad and so small. I hold you with the same hands I hold them all, and I wish these hands could do more. I wish these hands, this mind, this heart could be so much more; I wish this body could heal her tumor and carry her pain. I wish my body could stand between you and abuse or shame. I would lay myself down to ease the ache of the world.

And I would think of those Dominican stars, so big and beautiful, gas and dust expanding into light.

And in some quiet moment, on a Sunday night in late July, they raised my chin and made me stand stock-still between the whirling tension of rage and delight. We are not so different from those fireballs in the sky, collecting soul and spirit matter over time. As much as I wish to carry all the hurt and all the shame, I will only stand beside you, hold you and love you, because I would hate to take that glorious substance, relentlessly expanding dust and gas, aching into eternal light.

We are made to become such magnificent giants, stars in the night.

Your Crib is Empty

Your crib is empty, baby.

You were due to arrive Monday; the date is marked on every calendar I own. My phone and work computer, graphite on calendar paper, everything holds the expectation of you, because you are precious, little one, and we couldn’t wait to meet you.

Did you know the name prayed over you means to explore, to go before, to discover? Your name meant to listen.

I hope someone gives you a safe place to explore. I hope every one of your senses discovers all the wonders of this world. I hope are you free, baby. And I hope someone will listen to you sing and cry and laugh. I hope someone will see the golden, sweet nectar soul you carry in your body.

I hope someone puts bubbles in your bath.

This world is beautiful, love.
Leaves and streams. Oceans and fireflies. Elephants and sunsets.

And for all of this, we want to be with you, to help you, to love you, to hold you, to sing over you, and to watch you grow. And there are three people who have been building home for you, who were waiting for you. Your future was already glowing in the hope of their souls.

I could pick a flower every day for the rest of my life, and the bouquet would not be as big or as beautiful as the way they loved you, already, before your tiny legs and toes and elbows were ever known.

And sweet baby, the world is ugly too.

In the eve of your birth, men and women were murdered, in ways so inhumane, so evil and cruel. You do not know what any of this means yet, and honestly, the grown ups have no clue too. We are such angry and sad and scared creatures. War tears through life on the other side of our aching circle earth and in our backyards, just as it does in our precious, ragged hearts. Every day, you will fight your own wars, and we all want to be with you, to help you, to love you, to hold you, to sing over you, and to watch you grow, baby girl.

So many lives have been murdered, stolen because we are such angry and sad and scared creatures. Their beds are empty just like the crib that sits in your brother’s room, waiting for you. Their children and partners and mothers and fathers are feeling these empty, endless, deep well spaces, too.

But what we do know is they are gone, and the grief has some concrete slab of knowing on which to hold.

But you, baby girl, you? Are you alive? Are you safe? Are you crying or hungry or lonely or scared? We do not know, and this is the most devastating of miscarriages.

We do not know.

How do I do this well? When all I want is you, to be with you, to help you, to hold you, to sing over you, and to watch you grow.

We love you, baby; we love you.

Let’s Fly

Our bodies split the circle of the sun, separated the air as we fell.

I swallowed the air between earth and sky. I let you carry my life on your chest. I let you push our bodies into a great gravity from ten thousand feet in the sky.

Still, you were with me, held tight to me. Your chest was at rest on my spine during the moments I felt most free. The fall felt like your nature, like your home, and you welcomed me. Our arms and legs spread wide toward the horizon lines, airborne.

And when we fell, I held nothing in my hand or mind; this was a thirty five second reckless adventure, and I was fully surrendered to gravity, to maybe.

That morning, I woke to news of one man murdering forty-nine human beings, wrecking so many others. He was pure hate leaking from an acid soul to the ends of his guns, ripping the flesh and bone of bodies built from love. How?

How?
How do we wake?
Or pull our shirts over our heads?
Or send our children away, to school or to play?

How do we pray?

We are such fragile and sick creatures, the tenderness beat from our souls. We hurt one another and ourselves. We are selfish and poor. We are filled with cancer and hatred, grief and fear. We busy ourselves to help us forget and avoid, to neglect that feral ache. However, that pulsing, feverish longing is there, somewhere between our bones.

So, we build new houses, make more babies, memorize more scripture, or begin new projects to quiet the nagging insufficiency of this whole life thing full of the cries of our neighbors and the violence in our own homes.

Surely, acknowledgement is a terrifying place in which to fall headlong.

I could have sat on my couch all day.
I could have refused to leave the ground.
I could have remained inside the cabin of the plane.

But as we fell I heard in the howling thick, white noise a gentle seam of laughter, cracking the furious sound in two. And perhaps that was the best prayer I have ever prayed, the beauty of a wildly divine tumble of joy pouring from my belly into the sky as I abandoned myself to Maybe.

I think Maybe is begging me to become a child, to trust and to fall again and again. Maybe is asking me to humbly acknowledge and refuse to avoid, to sink and to soothe the darkness in others and myself with the sound of an unmanageable joy.

In childlikeness, to live becomes to fall, full-hearted and full-bodied into the tension of human gravity and to pray simply, crying and laughing into the violent fury. I have lived many days staying, holding, tightly grasping. But moment by moment, I am pushed to the fall, held to his chest, listening for that prayer of laughter spill from my wild fire tenderness.

Let’s fly.

---

An Epilogue

In response to some frequently asked questions:
Yes, my instructor was attractive.
No, I did not inquire if he was single or not.
…perhaps I will ask next time.