This Next Trip Around the Sun

Before driving into work last Friday morning, I’d cued up the 2008 Tony Awards performance of The Lion King’s “Circle of Life” to listen to as the hills and farms slipped past the car windows and beneath the tires. It’s a grand theatrical achievement, with actors becoming gazelles and giraffes right before your eyes while the audience, enchanted, roars to its feet with approving delight. As the performers’ voices reached the song’s arcing crescendo, I had to pull over, blinking back tears. Such an anthem of celebration for all living things, but playing now against a backdrop of my perpetual ache from the last twenty months of disunity, wholly preventable pandemic deaths, violence and vitriol between members of my species and a planet drowning, gasping for air. It all mashed together in a slurry of sadness and despair for the murky path ahead. In that moment by the side of the road, I recognized my grief for what it was—the loss of connection, the absence of regard for others, of civility and kindness. All of it touched tenderly by the wellspring of hope that a simple Broadway company of actors conjured up with stilts on their legs and zebra masks on their faces. I’ve watched this performance several times, but it sliced through something different that morning and I’m still unpacking it.

When I arrived at the office, the last thing I wanted to do was check emails.

But check them I did, and returned a couple of phone calls, all the while registering a lingering sense of unfinished business for which I could not find the words. Thankfully, for the past twelve years, I’ve worked in a setting where silence is an acceptable and healthy response for what the mind can’t grab onto (I also have an office with a door that shuts, a “do not disturb” button on the desk phone and colleagues whose demands that day were on the light side).

Earlier last week I told Patrick it would be fun if we danced more. It’s not like anyone would see us, in case either of us felt self-conscious (which we don’t) and movement of any kind is good for the cardiovascular system, so hey, just a suggestion, honey. Patrick’s primary way of “cutting loose” is his art, his wood-turning happy place just steps from the back door to the mud room. His studio is a long pre-fab wooden barn-style shed perched on the ridge with front doors that he can fling open to pull in the breezes. He works always with a soundtrack of the most eclectic mix of music threading its way across the grass and down into the meadow. It’s gotta be that loud because the lathe, the bandsaw, the air compressor all compete for his attention while he’s wearing his noise-muffling headphones and dual-filter anti-dust mask. One evening he stepped out for a break just as I was crossing the yard to check on him and the music playing was a Caribbean-style island beat. Without a word to each other, we picked up the drums’ rhythm and let loose right there beneath the towering silver maple with moves neither of us knew we had in us. Smiling, hopping from one foot to another, arms reaching and hands pushing against the air between us, we danced like no one could see us until the song and our moves resolved into one final unified note. The sweet laughing smile on his face is an image I plan to hold onto for some time to come.

I don’t mind the hills and valleys of an emotionally-rich existence. As the song goes, “from the day we arrive on the planet and, blinking, step into the sun”, we’re continuously plumbing the depths of our feelings’ vast well, pulling them to the surface for all sorts of occasions and testing the elasticity of our relationships’ tolerance of such expression. Those who can receive what we offer them or who can handle being drenched with our episodic outbursts are keepers; we move on from those who can’t and wish them no ill. We are born into a world that does not promise a smooth flat ride. If we’re lucky we find teachers who show us how to navigate the bumps, the twists, the hairpin curves and bring snacks to eat between gas stations. The last year and a half’s relentless slog through one heartache after another was heavier than I’d allowed. Watching a theater filled with people applauding, singing, looking for all the world as if they were indeed connected to one another, if only for just the duration of that grand performance, was such a stark contrast to the past 20 months….and not a surgical or cloth mask in sight, that telltale reminder that this current movie we’re in ain’t over yet, not by a mile. Who we will be on the other side of it all remains to be seen. I pray fiercely for the dormant seeds of resilient love to push through the compost of our collective grief.

I don’t know what the next year will bring, but if that sun keeps coming up for the next 365 days, I plan to laugh and cry and dance my way through as best I can.

After all, today’s my birthday. What better gift can I give myself than a promise to keep trying?

(Author’s note: the beautiful artwork in the photo accompanying this reflection is a collaborative effort between artist Becki at Old Mr. Bailiwick’s and my husband Patrick. Becki crafted the leather dancing skeleton and Patrick wood-burned and painted the frame. The latter is on its way to bring finished; just couldn’t wait to show you.)

Lessons From a Spider's Apocalypse

I’m sixteen years old, lying half in, half out of my sleeping bag on the dock at our family’s cottage on Marble Lake in Quincy, Michigan. By the glow of a July full moon, an orb-weaving spider is connecting one of the dock posts to the rough wooden edge of a plank with a diagonally dropped silken strand, on her way to filling in the space with that familiar spoked wheel design the night’s gnats can’t resist. I’m lucky enough to catch this one-arachnid show from just after the overture, and don’t plan to budge until she’s settled into the sticky spiraled center, upside down and patiently waiting for dinner to arrive (you do stuff like this when you’re sixteen, because you’re romantic and unemployed and on vacation with your parents). I’m also grateful to not roll around much when I sleep; a night spent on the dock of a marble quarry-turned-lake can be a rather wet affair if you’re prone to acting out those flying dreams you have.

It’s one of the most cherished memories from my youth, watching with unbridled curiosity and gathering wide-eyed respect the painstaking process of such an effort from start to finish, knowing that by the first lights of dawn most of what she spun would be shredded and torn, and she’d have to make a new one for her next meal. I have never worked so hard to put food in my belly; I doubt I ever shall.

In the past year’s more or less daily walks, I’ve clumsily barreled through at least a dozen of these gossamer creations, taking a few of them full on the face like a mask, blinking madly to disentangle my eyelashes from the gluey threads that crisscrossed my face. Always regretting it, always wincing because I know what it took to construct those meal-catchers. I don’t know if the web’s architect was dragged along for the rest of my steps or let go to save herself, grumbling at my overlarge thoughtlessness. I only recall deep regret that had I been more attentive, we all might have come through that leg of the morning’s journey with both of our universes intact and unbothered. If spiders use profanity, the air across the field is thick with it when I’m out and about, guaranteed.

The topic of impermanence has come up a lot in my conversations with Patrick lately, and it covers considerable ground between the sublime and the ridiculous. I suppose we’re trying to make sense of the growing whack-a-mole dangers and catastrophes continuously bubbling their way through our daily lives (sometimes it’s just not possible to ignore the news) and find even a modicum of consolation that both pleasure and pain will exhaust themselves with cyclical regularity. The trick is where we choose to place our philosophical starting point (so far, that’s still a moving target. No “once and for all” yet). We’re both learning to shift our outlook toward the more optimistic, with slowly plodding results. It’s just so hard to trust your current vantage point when threats are flung at you fast and thick from every direction.

And then we see the fields strewn with webs of all manner and style—the spoked wheel ones that are sagging with dew but still intact (there’s a lesson for ya); others resemble gauzey fairy hammocks and don’t appear to have ensnared a single stray or distracted mosquito, not one, in the dark expanse of night. Small and humble, big as Thanksgiving serving platters, snagged on a nearby iron weed stalk, it makes no difference. As the sun rises and sends its shafts of light down through them all, it’s nothing but enchantment and other-worldliness. We can’t look away and so we don’t. We know most of these creations and their owners will be gone for good while we go about chopping kale for our evening salad or sweeping leaves from the front porch. It’s easy to forget they’re out there, these little relatives of ours, setting their tiny legs and instincts to spinning another one from scratch. Again. How they don’t explode in anger and frustration I’ll never know.

And that’s the difference between spiders and me. But if they’re still willing to get up tomorrow and teach me, the least I can do is show up for class.

The Last Twenty Years

It started off blue
September sky, nothing wrong
Familiar Tuesday.

Good souls unaware
One hundred two minutes pass
Plans now turned to dust.

Screams become silence
The living calling loved ones
Getting kids from school.

Speeches, tributes, songs
Long lines for blood, rescue dogs
Churches sending socks.

The phones keep ringing
Offers of help unending
Put “helpless” on hold.

Maintain your resolve
Keep donating blood, money
The Longest War starts.

Numbness marks our days
We stumble forward, trying
Grasping hands in hope.

Three, four years go by
Too many flag-draped coffins
Not enough closure.

That’s how it would be
(Though we couldn’t see it then)
For sixteen more years.

We keep on going
Electing and protesting
Taking kids to school.

Voices get louder
Drown out calls for unity
And still some will hope.

Glimmers of promise
Lace our days, hold off despair
Weddings, reunions.

We keep waking up
We try on a new “normal”
And it seems to fit.

Here, deep in our hearts
A steady persistent truth
We want to go on.

Slog through the Virus
Needless preventable deaths
A year without hugs.

What we couldn’t see
Twenty years ago, is clear
Painfully clear now.

If we’re to move on
We must be willing to heal
To forgive. To love.

In our tired hands
The promise of what’s to be
The next twenty years…

Helpers

A rolling vertical pelt of rudbeckia and jewelweed rims the creek’s edge all through the meadow, marking where the mower decided “tamed” should end and “left to its own wild business” continue untouched and unbridled. Everywhere I look is a sea of late summer green dotted generously with yellow blooms that resemble fallen stars (rudbeckia) and tiny delicate princesses’ slippers (jewelweed). Occasionally a surprise cluster of orange jewelweed pushes its golden sisters aside, wedging in to be noticed.

Up until last Friday, I hadn’t walked for five days and was feeling sluggish, pitiful and stale. I don’t lean toward an addictive personality, but if I did, my drug of choice would be these size 6 1/2 feet of mine connecting rhythmically with the soft soil of the paths we keep tending across the land. My raggedy soul is better for it and tells me so in the middle of management meetings when the discussion grows tense yet I remain calm and gentle. Without those daily walks, I fray at the edges and leave a usually-vigilant internal editor in the dust. And while I tried to convince myself I’m sturdy enough to head out no matter what the weather, the heat and humidity of the past week pushed me back indoors where I settled for a slimmed down yoga routine and free weights to at least salve my fitness conscience. The kittens joined in and a good time was had by all.

Now, on a late Friday afternoon, I’m stretched out flat on my stomach with a blanket beneath me in the shade of the Old Man sycamore by the bend in the creek. The fingers of my right hand absentmindedly comb the cool thin grass while my other hand grasps a pen, shaping images into sentences. I’d been up since 7:00a.m. making tray upon tray of granola for Saturday’s market—a job that requires continuous standing, bending, lifting—and for the first time in seven hours, I’m silent and heading toward stillness. I smartly gave myself a five-day weekend with only granola and log-splitting on the agenda. Anything else I accomplish will be born of that luscious mix of creativity and impulse.

It’s a dance, this life of daily labor and leisure (tilted lately a bit more heavily toward labor), balancing relief and tension, reassurance and uncertainty. A dear friend once confided in my that she’s done chasing happy and is instead cultivating contentment. Just the sound of that slowed my heart rate from frantic bird speed to that of a turtle’s (passive research reveals the normal rate to be about twenty-five beats per minute for turtles, compared to 282 beats per minute for a bird. I can relate to both). I want so much to be where she is, and have miles to go.

So, I’m finding small ways to get there, and they seem to be working. Patrick has introduced us both to the art of meditation and I’m embracing it with a peaceful determination. He made himself a string of beads that he fingers steadily in silence, helping him move from anxious to calm, distracted to mindful, restless to languid. I dug through my stash of beads and cording, making myself a couple of strands and now keep one on my nightstand and the other on the end table next to the couch. One’s rather whimsical with fat pink rabbit beads, the other more traditional and understated. I took both down to the meadow with me just because I wanted their company and, during a break in the writing, flipped over on my back, gazed into the Old Man’s canopy of fluttering green leaves and started working my way through the rabbit strand, each bead marking something for which I was grateful. I must have drifted off because I woke up with a slight jerk when the strand dropped from my hands onto the blanket. It was simply glorious, to thank my way into such solace.

Without beads, I know the jewelweed and rudbeckia blooms would get me there just as peacefully. So does each step I take from the back door to the woods, walking sticks in each hand to frame the rhythm of my gait. What a gift, to realize that I’m never separated from what I need to get me where I want to be, that helpers are all around and waiting for me to notice.

All I need is to get out of the kitchen and start walking.