A Question for You

It’s only 9:35am, and I’ve already made some good decisions.

From the time I woke up until just a few moments ago, my options were:

Sleep in or go for a walk? (I walked).

Go for a walk first, or wash the dishes and wipe down the stove and then walk? (Came back from the walk to a clean kitchen).

Eat breakfast and play my New York Times brain-building games, or move the old chicken pen, wrapped in grapevines and anchored to the ground with quackgrass, filled with scraps of wood and rusty t-posts and sections of corrugated roofing and maybe a snake or two, with three large metal tube gates and a ten-foot section of cattle panel leaning against it? (Emptied and dug out the pen, felt like I’d earned my breakfast).

Eggs sunny-side up, or yogurt with nearly-fermented mangoes? (landed on the side of a bowlful of probiotics and one less container’s contents tossed on the compost pile).

Kinda makes you wonder what the rest of the day will offer, huh? I’m grateful every day for the choices I have. Easy ones, like those above. And tougher ones, the ones that make me squirm under their moral weightiness. Especially those. That’s where the growth is. That’s where the meaning lives.

My friends, we’ve all made—and continue to make—a wide range of decisions lately. Heck, this entire year has been an unsettling amalgamation of gut-wrench and coin-toss, leaving us at times breathless with worry or laughter (depends on the outcome, right?). I’m dedicated to finding that coveted middle ground, that place where extremes dissolve and we’re able to pause the drama button, maybe have a sandwich or get some good REM sleep. It’s that sweet spot in our encounters with one another where we really listen and don’t just shout across whatever banners we’re carrying. Where relationships matter more than opinions and we agree that there’s missing information each of us needs before we can draw that Conclusion that makes everything clear. It’s hard work, made messier by the fact that most choices we make aren’t just between two options but several. If you like buffets (and miss them; they’re mostly gone), you must be in your element right about now.

I’ve recently rediscovered and immersed myself in the “Dream Cast” concert rendition of Les Miserables, unfolded on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in all it’s musical and lyrical splendor back in 1995 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its West End production. It’s a rich and indulgent experience on its own, and a soothing soundtrack to accompany the time I spend in my studio creating hand-bound journals. But I put down my glue brush and give myself over to the scene where Enjolras and his fellow students wrestle with the fundamental choice between their positions of privilege and the unrelenting call to leverage it in service to their fellow citizens mired in poverty. One statement presses the question against all they’ve known and demands they make that choice: “It is time for us all to decide who we are.” Eleven well-placed words, and the gap between Hugo’s historic fictional France in 1815 and our own United States in 2020 evaporates.

If we’re paying attention, awake and alert, we face that decision every day. It doesn’t have to be in the context of a global pandemic or an election year.

It’s there in the moment we’re waiting for our pick-up order in the grocery store parking lot, keeping track of who’s wearing a mask and who isn’t, and passing judgment on another’s circumstance or character. It’s when we blurt out what we’re feeling, unfiltered and uncensored in a heated argument with someone we love, and immediately wish we could take those barbed words back. It’s snark versus silence, sacrifice against self-interest, integrity over convenience. I bump into and sometimes trip over these options numerous times in the hours between breakfast and lunch, and wonder, again, what choices the rest of the day will offer me, all in an effort to help sharpen my conscience and keep it agile.

When all that doesn’t matter is stripped away, who am I still? What remains that is worth nurturing, worth stretching, worth polishing and refining? And, dear ones, worth celebrating? I may have shared this with you in a long-ago post, but it’s worth a rerun: my late psychologist father used to say, “Self-revelation is not for the squeamish.” A timeless and timely observation, especially now. What do I really care about? What do I really want in these days of turmoil, with all of us in the grip of such relentless uncertainty? If I’m going to answer that, I need to know who I am. I need to know what I stand for, and what I won’t tolerate, what’s unfinished and what’s beyond my influence. I can’t sugar-coat it this time. It wouldn’t be helpful. At the end most days, I’m humbly aware that I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got right where I am, and that there’s a LOT more work to do. I lean on grace often, and hope the sun comes up another day so that I’ll have another chance to choose what’s right instead of what’s easy. When what’s right is what’s easy, I celebrate with gratitude.

The pandemic will eventually be tamed, and November will present us with fresh challenges, no matter what the outcome. Between now and then, and afterwards, we still need to decide who we are.

I can think of no more important question than that. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Laundry

In the home office upstairs is a retractable clothesline that we purchased unawares as part of a box lot at an auction several years ago. It was buried beneath a most excellent collection of 70’s Tupperware (with all matching lids accounted for—how cool is that?), and we paused a few seconds before we realized what it was. We tucked it away, already having a four-liner set up outside to hang laundry in the spring and summer, and the shower curtain rods sufficient for most things in the winter. That, plus a laundromat four miles up the road for the heavy stuff (sheets and blankets, throw rugs) kept us on track with our modest assertion that we didn’t need a dryer in the already-tiny mudroom where the washer lived.

We eventually installed it in the living room, mounting the reel on the left side of the doorway to the kitchen, then putting in a drywall screw on the right side of that same doorway and another one on the right side of the front door clear across the room so we could string the line twice and get the most length possible. This worked fine until guests raised a few eyebrows about socks and other “smalls” hanging above their heads during dessert. Of course, I’m kidding (no indoor laundry on days when we entertained). But it moved quickly from the living room to the upstairs guestroom/office where we could set free our damp wearables for hours, even days at a time, without a trace of apology or self-consciousness. An added bonus was how the damp laundry humidified the upstairs during the cold dry months, bringing an industrious new meaning to our experience of “cozy”. Sure, our things dried stiff as boards without the luxury of a warm tumble in the drum of some front-loading mechanical wizard, but a smart snap and a moment under a hot iron softened the fabric just fine, and left us feeling dryer-lessly virtuous (though I don’t know why. It’s no sin to own a dryer). For us, it was one less appliance making the outside meter spin like a top, one less motor to troubleshoot, one less hole cut in the side of the house for the vent.

We’ve lived here twenty years without a television, microwave, clothes dryer, doorbell (that’s what the peacock was for in the early years) and outdoor security lights (save for the porch light which does come in handy to shoo raccoons off the front deck), and don’t see them in our immediate future. Does that make us Luddites? I don’t think so. We’re not opposed to technology to help get a job done, as evidenced by the presence of a toaster on our kitchen counter (a Hello Kitty toaster, to be precise), a fairly new but turning-loved Instant Pot resting near the tea cabinet, an immersion blender, food processor, chain saw, hair dryer…I think you get the idea. And our laptop is as much a necessity for us as it probably is for most people; hooked up after dinner, we’re content to watch The Great British Baking Show or Ballykiss Angel while the water heats up for coffee. It also makes this website and accompanying blog posts much easier to distribute and manage.

Some of it is a space issue. The kitchen is done eating appliances large and small—there’d be no room to safely put anything else unless we got rid of the stove or the sink—and even with our almost-done-being-remodeled mudroom, a clothes dryer would be such a tight fit it wouldn’t be worth the effort to unload it from the truck and push it through the narrow doorframe to find its place next to the racks of granola-making supplies. On laundry day, it’s easier to lug the basket of wet jeans and towels up the steps to the home office, unspool the rubber-coated clothesline from its anchor on the south wall near the window and set to it. Any fleeting desires for the feel of a flannel shirt warm from the dryer evaporate in the face of a more perpetual longing to be keep this commitment going. Perhaps as we get older and less able to balance a laundry basket on our newly-replaced hips while gripping the stairway railing with an arthritic hand, we will change our minds. We’re not there yet, so no need to rush things.

This unintended auction purchase has become part of the inside landscape, as valued a tool as the two repurposed cottage cheese containers next to the kitchen sink that catch our eggshells, onion skins and apple cores for the compost bin. A retractable clothesline opened us up to a new possibility, one we would not have sought out on our own. Simple, effective, and it probably paid for itself after two uses. And while I prefer the scent of laundry freshened and dried outside on the line, I thought twice about making the indoor drying option a permanent plan two weeks ago. I was unpinning a cotton blanket from one of those four lines strung between two cast iron t-shaped posts when a hornet nailed the top of my right ear, sending the basket of laundry tumbling to the just-cut grass at my feet and a string of expletives flying from my mouth. I tore through the kitchen to the big freezer, grabbed and icepack and held it to the right side of my head, thinking ten minutes would do the trick. It took four days for the swelling to go down, and I spent more time during those four days noticing the shape of my ears than I ever had in my life. Important to note: the open ends of those cast iron posts have been capped off; I’m tempted to hang a “closed” sign from them just to make a point, but am not sure hornets can read.

Of course I’ve done more laundry since, and there’s a load hanging as I type this, swaying in a gentle breeze beneath a cloudless sky of the most brilliant blue. Get back on the bike, right? But the clothesline upstairs waits patiently to be employed again, a “just in case” presence I can count on during the next rainy (or hornet-y) day.

I’m glad we dug through all that Tupperware…

J.B.I.C.

There are some things you do simply because it’s possible to do them:

Driving home from work barefoot.

Standing on the front lawn in a downpour, getting completely drenched, then toweling off and calling it the day’s shower.

Eating peanut butter right from the jar (spoon optional).

Buying a bouquet of pink and white alstroemeria blooms at the grocery store and randomly handing them out to strangers in the parking lot on your way back to your car.

Writing limericks.

Picking your nose at a four-way stop.

Opening an Argentinian Malbec and a Cabernet for dinner, when it’s just you and the cats.

These are rarely, if ever, items deliberately included on anyone’s to-do list. They tend toward the impulsive, the indulgent, or the “I deserve this because it’s been a hard day” reasoning—yep, even the nose-picking one—and I’ve yet to see them as accomplishments on anyone’s resume (though how fun would that be for a hiring manager in the right company? I’d certainly given that applicant at least a second look, and kudos for taking the risk).

On the continuum of what we do simply because we have the ability, I realize that not all activities are noble or decent or in any stretch of reasoning redemptive. There are too many that spring up from our less-than-laudable side and leave misery and a lot of mopping up in their tumultuous wakes. Freedom and choice are rich with possibility and fraught with dangers we often can’t see until we’ve made a choice (without that one key bit of additional information) and then we find ourselves facing more complicated and knottier decisions. By the time I get to that point, I’ve got my apology rehearsed. Driving home from work barefoot seems innocent enough until one is pulled over for having no brake lights. If, on mad impulse, one happened to fling one’s sandals into the back seat with Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” blaring from the speakers, one knows it will be more difficult to retrieve said sandals if the kind but serious officer asks one to step out of the car (driving barefoot is legal in all fifty states, but not recommended. Just so you know).

There are lots of reasons NOT to do something just because I can.

But even with the risk of choosing unwisely, I still land on the side of impulsive indulgence most days. It is possible to overthink the easiest of options that life’s experience buffet lays out before us, or to second-guess your best intentions. The purity of an idea is to be respected and considered: “Let’s buy some gift cards and leave them on the windshields of cars parked outside the hospital’s emergency room”. If I stopped too long to wonder if I’d get corralled by the hospital security’s patrol car or winced at the expense, I’d probably talk myself out of it, and the good souls to whom those cars belong wouldn’t get to experience the gift of surprise (or even relief that dinner has now been taken care of for them). I believe in the inherent goodness of people. We tend toward decency far more often than malicious intent, no matter what the headlines tell us. I trust in the uncounted acts of thoughtfulness that never appear above or below the fold.

Back when I was a campus minister in a local parochial high school, I was offered the chance to chaperone a student immersion trip to Spain. With every six students who signed up, an adult got to go for free (those were the days, huh?). All expenses paid—airline tickets, transportation, lodging. An easy “yes”, right? Well, I’d never flown before, was committed to being claustrophobic, and didn’t even want to think about all that open water beneath the belly of the plane for seven and a half hours. I told the Spanish teacher I’d get back to him. It took me a week to figure this one out. I confided everything in a close friend and mentor, who kindly let me finish my back-and-forth position before blurting out (just as kindly, but…clearly) “Liz, some decisions in life are easy. This is one of them—GO!! Right. Ok. Got it. Three days later, I’m 35,000 feet above all that water with just enough Dramamine to keep me pleasantly in my seat and a pocket full of souvenir money (most of which landed in the till of a guitar craftsman in Granada the night before our return to the States. Oh my…Sting’s “Fragile” never sounded more beautiful than when I plucked its haunting melody from those nylon strings). One more day of thinking it through and I’d have missed learning where the phrase “Holy Toledo” comes from and seeing all those feral cats outside the Alhambra, alongside being chased by street vendors trying to sell me hand-crocheted table cloths. Those memories are mine now, all because I decided to do something that was possible.

I understand that not all of our options are as romantic, or subsidized. We still have to do the dishes, dust the furniture and driver responsibly. But when a ground-soaking downpour presents itself on a sleep-in Saturday morning, and one has nowhere to go, getting drenched and splashing in the muddy puddles near the trucks parked by the front deck is quite possibly the best decision one will make that day (having a dry towel handy was a slightly less-impulsive thought that tagged along with the “go out and get drenched” one. I grabbed one from the laundry room and felt rather clever). Plus, it counts as the day’s shower.

Just because I can.

The Long View, in Both Directions

We haven’t had popcorn in a while. We used to buy it from a neighbor, Joe, down the road years ago, who sold it to raise money for the Boy Scouts. He’d drive his white Toyota pick-up to the Duke station four miles away, and keep a box of the two-pound bags in the back seat just in case you stopped to get gas at the same time he did and the conversation turned to snacks. Joe’s sales pitch was all smiling and gentle; not at all high-pressure, but who could turn down popcorn from an 90-something year-old man who barely cleared 4’ 11” on a tape measure and kept a small spiral notebook in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt where he’d written today’s date and calculated the number of days until his next birthday. He’d whip out that notebook a few minutes after the usual “hello’s” and “how are ya’s?”, using the stubby point of a yellow golf pencil to show you the math. After a sharing some stories from a recent meeting he chaired for the local historical society, we’d be on our way, minus a few dollar bills but a two-pound bag of popcorn now in the backseat of our Toyota truck.

Joe died in 2016, eighty days shy of his 99th birthday, according to the penciled-in math. We’ve bought popcorn since then at the local bulk store and it pops up just fine, but it’s missing something. Some months after his memorial service, we attended an auction on his farm, touching pieces of the life he shared for 63 years with his beloved Bea, all sorted and displayed in banker’s box lids on rows of folding tables set up on the lawn. Four years later, we continue to be custodians of an impressive rock collection he and Bea gathered on their many travels, and are honored to have the license plates from that white Toyota truck that read “Old Joe”.

I’m not sure why that memory rose to the surface today, but being caught in the swirling current of relentless uncertainty these days, it’s natural (and necessary) to page through the snapshots of a pleasanter time and sit in their soothing company for a while. It doesn’t make the pandemic go away, or help the good people of Beirut recover their footing after last week’s horrific explosion, and it isn’t supposed to. I know that. But it pulls me back from the edge of an abyss too deep to comprehend and helps my news-battered heart catch its breath for a few minutes. There’s important work to do, to be sure, and we’ll set ourselves to it heart and soul and sinew, but I suspect I’m not the only person on the planet right now who’s longing for a break from the accumulated weight of the last five months. I want to be here in the next five, and pausing ever so often is not optional. It’s required if you’re in it for the Long Haul.

I find myself wondering lately about the collective resilience of the human species. How much can we bear? So far, I’d say a LOT. We’re still here, still plugging away, and though not always ringing the bell when it comes to our best values in action, we’re trying. As I pull quackgrass from the edges of the onion patch in the garden, dodging the tender poison ivy shoots in between, I feel like I’m doing what I can to keep despair a few acres away. These onions, and the beets and tomatoes and zucchini we picked a few minutes ago will feed Patrick and me at some point in the near future, and we’ll feel glad for growing them ourselves. We’ll drop off a bag of kale and tomatoes to family, happy that they love them as much as we do. Patrick’s out in his workshop now, building another raised bed that will hold our late summer garden’s transplants of more kale, more mixed greens, and perhaps a late second crop of beets, if the sun keeps coming up between now and then. Acting as if we’ll get the gift of that many more sunrises is insurance against everything else we can’t control. From here, we’re trying to see the harvest, still well-hidden beneath the soil and today’s bleak headlines.

So far, it seems to be working, this dance between the soft edges of pleasant memories and a fierce hope toward a future whose face is indistinct but trying to smile. Fear still creeps in and wants to take up residence in our souls, but we refuse delivery most days. We speak words of encouragement and reassurance to anyone who needs them, and keep it real when an angry rant is the only thing that will make us feel better. Looking over our shoulders at all that we’ve shouldered up to this point fortifies us and even makes us laugh. That’s good Medicine.

One of the cottonwoods by the creek has already started shedding its leaves, and I check the calendar to make sure it’s still summer. It makes me think of the time Dad was visiting our first August here, and we showed him where the osage orange trees grew on the slope just at mouth of the meadow. He swore by the brain-looking green fruits as a deterrent to cockroaches, and we promised he could come back in late September to pick to his heart’s content. He showed up that day, pockets stuffed full of plastic grocery bags, with Mom spotting the larger ones on the ground. The trees are growing heavy now with this year’s crop, and it’s impossible to look up into those branches and not see the grin on his face as he filled each and every one of those bags.

Somewhere in the space between what we remember and what we can only imagine… is a shower after a hot day trimming back tomato vines, dinner that includes something we planted and watched grow and then plucked from the ground when it was ready, the cool thin grass beneath a grove of young mulberry saplings, and the comfort of holding Patrick’s hand.

We live in this space every minute of every day, noticing, watching..

Hoping.