The highlight of the party was a song that Chinua made up from words that everyone in the room came up with to describe me. It turned out to be a little reggae ditty with the refrain, "You don't have club foot." There were lots of other sweet words that said nice things about me but that refrain was catchy as all get-out, and one of my favorite moments was the line "...and all your toes swing freely..."
We're home now, and I had a lovely day: cleaning, hanging my laundry on the line, moving furniture around. Renee and I drove into town this afternoon for dance class, which starts in a couple of hours. Looking on the bright side of things, I reflected, as we drove, that if we lived in town with all the benefits of grocery stores, herb stores, thrift shops and coffee shops, we would miss out on this drive that still takes my breath away, every time.
The wildflowers this year! The wildflowers! The late rains came and gave us the prettiest wildflowers I've seen. Hills of purple. Pink clover. Poppies, wild orchids. I gasp, I snort, I can't stop exclaiming over the wildflowers. I mourn that they are so short-lived, that it will quickly become hot and the sun will scorch them.
*
if I could,
I would weave you a ladder of wildflowers.
it would stretch straight into the air,
and I'm sure that your feet would scarcely bruise the petals
you'd feel them tickling that soft underside of your foot
as you leapt up my ladder, laughing.
you'd rise above all those things that nicker and nobble
the smokestacks, soot clinging to your clothes, the mounds of paper
bills and to do lists and, well, and all of it
you'd leave the freeways and the dust, the strip malls, as you held on tightly
poppies springing back under your feet.
lupin under your hands,
I can see you, eying that one cloud as a good resting spot.
the cloud that resembles your band teacher (from the seventh grade.)
May 21, 2007
I'm on the first day of a drive to Canada, to visit my parents while my Superstar Husband is in Turkey. And whaddya know, the best way to pack for a trip appears to be not at the last minute. And I'm speaking from the better side of the coin, the winning side, the one that isn't tearing her hair out and throwing loose socks in a torn plastic bag from Safeway while feeding the kids meat on a spoon.
I had a really great time packing this week. I took the time to do a good job, left my house clean enough for some friends to stay in while I'm gone, and even have the van organized. (A little, I'm not a different person, just more prepared).
I even put the jammies in a separate pocket of the suitcase so I could access them more easily.
So, as a first stop for my trip I decided to drive only 45 minutes north, to the ranch of some friends and rest up for the drive ahead.
While I was there I started crocheting a cowboy hat. I'll let you know how it turns out, because in my mind there is nothing cooler than a crocheted cowboy hat. Chinua disagrees, but he is wrong, WRONG. I drank Americanos, sat on a futon in the sun crocheting, chatted and laughed, and ate good food. My kids fed a bull, gave a horse some carrots, rode on his back, and played with the dogs. Leaf walked around and babbled and got into stuff and flirted with everyone, so he's probably had the least change in his routine, because that is pretty much what he does everyday.
I smelled roses, stared into the greenest hills, thought about my love far away, rested in the home of some very kind friends.
I guess you could say it has been beautiful so far.
May 28, 2007
Sometimes when I come back to visit with my parents I feel like I've turned into an adolescent again. I'm babysitting these kids, and I really need to get them to sleep because I have a report due tomorrow that I like, totally procrastinated on. And I'll probably have to pull an all-nighter. Or maybe I'll just read a book and then write it on the bus in the morning. Because, like I always say, there's nothing like a little procrastination to add some unneeded stress to your life! This was my method in high school. I don't know how pulled the grades off that I did.
Maybe it is this awkward-limbed adolescent feeling that has curled into my spine and mellowed me right out. We get up, we eat, we get dressed. We may have baths, I will wash their soft chubby fingers and rub suds into their hair. And then, I will stare at the work I brought with me and try really hard to remember what to do with it. And, unfailingly, I will be stumped because my brilliant Superstar Husband is far, far away and he's got the gaps in my brain filled. And so we eat my mom's cooking again, we play, we pick up toys, we have story time, and we sleep well.
I miss him like a tree that has lost its leaves. I have gone into hibernation.
But hibernation can be fun! Last night I picked my sister up from the bus station and remembered what it is like to have a sister. I have a sister! We look and sound like each other! Except she's cuter, and I want to squeeze her.
My road trip was great, by the way. On the second day we drove for seven hours, which is a lot longer than forty-five minutes, but surprisingly it went really, really well. Even the Leaf Baby was pretty mellow. I think it was grace, that amazing strength that bathes you when you need it, when you need rivers and rivers of sunlight to wash over you. I felt it as I drove on beautiful highways. There were flowers everywhere, light everywhere, rivers running alongside the road. I love the first day of this drive because of the small highways. We stopped at Rebeca and Eric's house for a day and it was lovely and restful. Well, as restful as it can be with little kids playing. You know, that kind of highly socialized playing that you and I do when we go out for coffee and I decide I want yours more so I snatch it from you and you fall under the table screaming.
I have always felt so inspired by Rebeca and her kids. She has such a way of involving them with all the things she does, the baking, even cleaning. They eat it up. I come away from visiting with her wanting to be like her.
The second day of driving is not as nice, that boring I-5 cutting across the land like a blade. Now that I live on small highways, I don't wish to return to four-lane freeways. I feel as though the city has finally been sweated out of me. I look around the forest and green hills where I live and finally feel as though this is my home. Toes in the dirt, sweeping pine needles out of my house.
June
June 14, 2007
I woke up this morning feeling like a truck hit me in the night, when I was sleeping in my bed, next to Chinua. I swear, some trucker lost his way. Or maybe it's just a headache, brought on by the allergies that plague me night and day. Or maybe I spent too much time in the sun yesterday, and didn't drink enough water.
On Monday, Renee and I were sitting in my favorite little cafe in the tiny town to the north of us, ready to drive out to an even tinier town, west of the tiny town, for our dance class with the teacher we adore. I think I feel the same way about her that I felt about my kindergarten teacher. I remember being all five years old with my knobby knees and unruly hair and— Oh how I loved my beautiful kindergarten teacher. She was so BEAUTIFUL. I really have no idea what she looked like. But she was LOVELY. My dance teacher is over fifty and one of the most beautiful women that I have ever met. On the way home, Renee and I always talk about two things. How the dancing went, and how much we admire our dance teacher. ("She's so nice... did you see her skirt today? She told me that I'm improving...")
But a funny thing happened on this particular Monday evening, and it has taken me this long to recover from it enough to write about it. I started out in a funk, determined to sweat it out of me, not understanding why my skin felt like it wanted to crawl away from me or something. We began our stretching time, which is awesome, probably my favorite part of the evening, with the drums going in the background encouraging you to strrrreeeetttch that muscle just a little bit more, and then we lined up to dance. Now, there is only one place that I hate to dance in this class, and it's in the last line. Basically, we follow the tea
cher, dancing across the floor toward the drummers in lines of three, and then we walk back. Being in the last line equals being pinned to the dissection board to me, because everyone watches you while they wait to dance again, and since on this day I was feeling about as intelligent as a worm, I really didn't want to be in the last line. I just wanted to be swallowed up in the crowd, but no, there I was, in the last line.
This is also an advanced class, and we are still beginners. So I fumbled, and I wobbled, and a couple of times I merely walked across the floor like cardboard (because, you know, cardboard walks) and I had a few breakthroughs, but somehow I managed to completely psyche myself out. The voice ranting in my head sounded something like this: Step step arm arm, no! Darn it, you are such a loser. Okay, step step arm arm, Oh my word, you are never going to be able to do this. You should be better than this, everyone is sneering at you, just look at their lips curling, wow, you look like a chicken more than a woman, how terribly clumsy and big you are.
Can you believe it? What a terrible voice! It was no wonder that I started to get tears in my eyes, and then, as the teacher picked up on the fact that I was getting more and more distraught, she began to really slow down the steps just ahead of me so that I could catch it at my pace. She encouraged me with signs to breathe, calm down, just follow her. When she turned more attention on me I realized that I was going to break down completely. Obviously, the only thing to do was make a run for it!
So I bolted. I grabbed my stuff and walked out the door and cried my way across the gravel parking lot and up to the top of one of the beautifully rounded hills. I sat down in the tall grass and hid up there, watching the tips of the grasses above my head, listening to the drums that I could still faintly hear. I cried and cried, and wondered what, exactly, I was crying about. It couldn't be about dancing.
From my point at the top of the hill I could see for miles, rounded hill after rounded hill, boulders and trees and clefts. The light was beginning to fade, the sun had already set. I lay back in the grass and watched the swathe of blue sky above me, listened to the bass of the drums pounding, and barely was able to calm down, despite all this calm around me. It was as though all the stillness could not seep into me, and I thought a lot about my whirling life these days, and how sometimes the smallest thing can trigger a rockslide, how maybe I've been waiting to cry.
Not being able to dance signifies a larger lack of ability that I feel, the crushing question, can I DO this? There are so many things whirling above our heads right now. We pray to pass through this with peace, with greater joy than before. But sometimes you just have to cry, you make a fool of yourself, you leave class, and you cry like a baby.
June 18, 2007
The time has come… to talk about "good enough".
Last night I had a dream about our three rats. I dreamed that I was trying to transport them in their cage, (along with a baby jaguar that I had mysteriously befriended) and they all got free. I could see them jumping and running through the grass, and for the rest of the dream I frantically tried to grab at them, but they kept eluding me, their fat furry bodies slipping through my fingers. The night grass was wet, and for what seemed to be a very long time I stumbled through it, desperate to get my husband's three pet rats back before his heart broke.
What does this have to do with good enough? Everything, obviously. Or nothing. Depending on which way you look at it. But I seem to have a lot of dreams about trying to do something the right way, only to have something go terribly, terribly wrong, and then the blame cloud settles above my head.
Right now I am trying to make up my mind about whether I want to go to my dance class again tonight, or whether I want to go home and watch a movie. I know for a fact that if I go to my dance class, I will feel embarrassed (for walking out last week), but that the exercise will make my blood run through my veins a little more spunkily. It will be good for me. Humiliation, West African Style. I also know that if I go home and watch the kind of escapist movie that I desire to watch, pretty much nothing good will come out of it. One thing I'm learning is that this kind of rest doesn't really make me feel rested. I mean, every once in a while it does, but it's always better to take things in that will have me rising from bed a little more excitedly the next day.
What does this have to do with good enough? Well, the question running through my mind when I think about dance class tonight is, "Will I be good enough?"
I found this group of words about simple living the other day.
Simplicity is voluntary, free, uncluttered, natural, creative, authentic, focused, margined, disciplined, diligent, healthful.
Simplicity is not easy, legalistic, proud, impoverished, ascetic, neurotic, ignorant, escapist.
You can see the difference between the two lists. One feels like a sweet breeze, the other smacks of that dark gray blame cloud. I like the idea of defining my life this way, of creating lists of words like beads on a string, beautiful shining things that keep me on a straight line. These words would have nothing to do with good enough.
Because I think that the answer is no. I'm not good enough. I never will be. I'm not good enough for my own tyrannical mind, I'm not even good enough for the shining standard that I seek to be. (like God) But this is not the point.
In my Christian faith there are words like redemption. In redemption, every sad thing is brought to beauty and joy. Every slip up has sparkly grace mixed in with it. This word has nothing to do with good enough. The whole point is that we are not good enough, and that a true Man had to be good enough for us. This sets us free from our endless self-justification that is a badly behaved cousin of guilt, always whining in the corner, "At least I'm not like Paris Hilton..."
You know?
In a way, the specifics don't even matter. It could be my lack of decorating skill, it could be my dusty corners, it could be the way that I ignore things in my fridge that I know good and well are rotting. It could be a rough hand on my child's shoulder, it could be an envious glance, it could be not enough money, not enough time, not enough patience. The point is that we are told to take our eyes off our belly buttons and be filled with a different kind of motivation. Not to be good enough. But to craft a life of love. A life where God always has the opportunity to bust through the clouds with the answer for the day, to be THE MAN.
Our list of words as people, mothers, fathers, friends, ministers, whatever we are, should not be drudgery, obligation, guilt, mockery, envy, competition and resignation.
This is the list of words that my Great Rescuer has for me: Freedom, joy, mercy, servanthood (because hey, floor's gotta be cleaned, right?) mystery, courtesy, simplicity, beauty, rest, diligence, awe, and many more. Not to mention fun. Funnity fun fun.
June 20, 2007
After I wrote the last post I did indeed take myself to my dance class. I went! And it was awesome! It was fun and I had the right line, and I kept up fairly well, and the best part is that I'm not getting as winded these days, so I know I've gotta be getting stronger.
On a completely different note, do you know what my least favorite part of the whole bedtime routine is? It's brushing my kids' teeth. I hate it, it is excruciatingly annoying to me. And yes, I do let the two older ones "brush" their teeth themselves, but whatever they're doing with the toothbrush seems to have about as much effect as sucking on a Q-tip covered in high-fructose corn syrup would, so there I am, stuck brushing their little chompers and gums.
Do you know what my favorite part of the bedtime routine is? It's reading. I love it, I crave it, it's my favorite time of day with my kids and I could do it for hours. I've been trying to get them ready early so that we can read as many books as possible before it's time to crawl into little beds and lay little heads on little pillows.
I will become a reading guru, and live on the highest mountain top with many little children, and my asceticism will be reading without fail, and our brown teeth will eventually fall out of our mouths, but we will read on.
Yesterday I m
ade soup for everyone here, and Kai helped me, pouring the chopped vegetables into the skillet, stirring everything around gently. I even let him chop, a little. He loved it, and it made cooking a lot more fun for me. Maybe we will cook on our mountaintop, too.
June 23, 2007
More from Annie Dillard:
"I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!"
The Writing Life
I love Annie Dillard because she makes me feel normal. She writes of being terrified of writing, of hating to write, of the danger and power and neurosis of writing. And I love it, because I feel all of these things, when I sit by myself in the early mornings and tap out a few more lines in my novel. The whole time I am so afraid.
Knitting is safe. It is rhythmic and soft, and I keep my knitting close to me while I write, so that when I come to the scariest parts I can grab it and soothe myself for a few minutes. It reminds me that there is order to the universe, that there are things that I can accomplish. I can turn a ball of yarn into a hat. Then I attack my keyboard again. It is perhaps not an accident that the one key that breaks occasionally is the backspace key.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 19