throwback thursday

I am trying to make myself write more, share more, get more feedback on my writing, etc etc etc. I am taking a writing class (thanks to some heavy nudging from a friend who knows me all too well) and trying to post more often here, just to build good habits and get stuff out there. I've been keeping a journal since I was 13, so I have a whole shelf full of old material to pull from, most of which should probably never see the light of day. but some of it has some worth I think, and it is a good reminder of where I've been and where I am now or something like that.

so here is a space for some old school goodies, things eric loves to hear me read out loud and that are not too embarrassing to throw out to the universe. this one is from my 23-year-old self.



this is the life I have made
this combination of comings and goings
with an apartment I rarely see inside
and beer for breakfast most mornings
just to jump start the day into motion
when nutrition is so far from my mind.
the balance of bad and worse
strung together with the measure
of time passing makes for
moments measured in teaspoons of tears
rather than split second short comings.
I can hear rumbles in the distance;
be it school buses or thunderstorms,
or my own stomach calling for more
it is only a distraction from the task at hand
and this simply will not do. so now I will wake up from dreams
I cannot remember into a reality I
cannot forget where time is well spent,
invested in fact, and each day a reminder
of not looking back.

18 november 2003

twice upon a time

we think we know how stories go, or at least how they are supposed to go. I certainly do. there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. there is rising action and a climax and then some sort of finality. this formula works beautifully for fairy tales and most novels; it works so well in fact that I've assumed my life should look the same way. a bunch of stories tacked together somehow, but really all one big long formulaic tale. and the end is the end and the middle is messy and that is just the way it goes. we want our lives to be beautiful stories of reconciliation and hope, but we forget that reconciliation requires conflict and heartbreak to come first, all the gnashing and weeping and wallowing we all dread. we wish for happy endings, but would we be better served by happy middles instead?

our stories are full of second chances. the stories we thought we were finished living, the doors we thought we so firmly closed have an uncanny way of reincorporating themselves back into out plot lines. and our stories never really end. we give them endings because that is the way our brains work. we like endings. endings make sense and tidy up the world nicely. I like a nice tidy world. that feels much safer than the unpredictable swarm I am actually living. but if I settle for tidy, I miss out on some pretty amazing chances.

two years ago I thought my story as a foster parent was over. my heart was broken, our family was in shock, and the system was just too terribly messy to overcome anymore. eric said never again. the world marched on. our girl went to live with another family, transferred schools, moved on just fine. all I could feel was failure. and that was how the story ended: my failure as a parent, as a world changer, as a relationship grower. because when stories don't end the way we think they should, they can hardly be considered happy. there were good things that came out of it. there was even some joy in the ending, horrible as it was. there was relief to having the stress of not knowing gone for good. there was a refocusing and a new direction as a family. but there was still the over-arching cloud of failure for me. it was sad and ugly and dark. it was like a bad break-up, only with a government agency involved telling you how you have to handle your heart. I could hardly bear it some days. I certainly couldn't handle bumping into our girl at the grocery store or looking at her photos on facebook. but times help, and perspective is a blessing, and life is changing all the time. so it goes and goes and goes.

failure can only happen if I have a vision for what life is supposed to look like. and that vision is only final in my own mind. I thought success with our girl would come because she lived in our house and called us her family. I thought success meant adoption and a name change. anything less than my own vision of a happy ending meant failure, my own failure, not hers.

it took two years for my heart to soften. it took two years to see maybe my vision of success is dead wrong. it took going away and coming back to realize my story is never really finished. it took a long grieving process and lots of talking it all out, lots of wallowing and being very mean to myself. it took a summer spent among kids in the same place in life as our girl, watching them figure it all out and realizing that I can be a part of their lives, a part of their stories without being their mama. and after all of that, when our girl called to say she was getting married, I could smile and offer to meet her for lunch. I can hug her hard and tell her how much I've missed her. I can listen to her story with tears in my eyes and know that this is all part of the happy, messy middle.

my word for 2014 is season. to remind myself to keep in the rhythm of it all. to be present for what it is, to appreciate the fullness of it all. to season my life and my relationships gently and remember that a little seasoning can go a long way. to stick it out even when it doesn't look the way I think it should. to be aware that I can never see the whole story all at once. my life does not look the way I thought it would when I looked ahead ten years ago, and I don't dare to think about what it may look like ten years from now. but if I can be here for this season right in this moment, to acknowledge that this is not my whole life, but just the season I am in, maybe I can enjoy it all the more.

photos by andrew manner, pictures with attitude

"some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. delicious ambiguity..."

~gilda radner

the way things are

this week's soundtrack. take a deep breath.

it's december. it's advent, the second week, in fact according to the wreath on our kitchen table. every night as it is getting dark we light the candles and I sing whatever song pops into my head in the moment. we're not too rigid about it all here at mudflower. thank goodness there are two candles every night now, so we don't have to fuss about who will blow the single candle out. next week when there are three, I am sure the fuss will start back up. we are counting down the darkness, counting up to the light. I can't wait for solstice just so I can feel like spring is coming, even if it is really still a whole season away.

eric works a lot. I say that, and then I think about a regular american work schedule, and it really isn't that much at all. but it seems like a lot to us. he serves as an assistant teacher at the local woo woo school in a preschool classroom. he says it makes him appreciate our own children so very much. then he hurries across town to the natural food store where he stocks shelves and makes small talk all day. he loves that job. he says it is the perfect mash-up of physical labor and social engagement. there are days he leaves before cora wakes up and gets home after she is in bed. we visit him at the store for hugs and a snack. the kids found reindeer antlers on a headband that they purchased for eric to wear at work. he wears them with pride, much to the amusement of the old ladies that love to flirt with him. 

cora is starting preschool. she thought her attendance was contingent on her keeping her underwear dry all day. now that she has mastered bladder control with consistency, she has begged to go to school. she went last week with eric, and love love loved it. jamin kept asking warily, "but I dont have to go, do I?" so very different, these children of mine. so cora will attend preschool three mornings a week and this is a very good thing for all of us. such an easy decision that just sort of made itself, a huge relief for my overly-analytical brain. I think I get so stuck in feeling like I have no choices in my world (there isn't enough money, we don't have time for that, this is the way life is supposed to look) that I can't really see it when the universe offers me beautiful gifts. it's scarcity thinking and it is terribly dangerous, and apparently it is a lesson I have to learn over and over and over.

thanksgiving was good. this is what we look like after two big meals and lots of time with people who love us. I am so thankful right now especially for people willing to love on my children because there are lots of moments these days when I just can't do a proper job of it myself. I am learning, slowly slowly slowly, that what I may believe philosophically about parenting or education or life in general may exceed my own psychological and emotional stamina. and I am learning even more slowly to just be okay with that.

we had lots of company and a very full house for a while there, which is good for me in lots of ways. firstly, I love a full house, I love having people around, I love sitting at the kitchen table and playing games and eating popcorn and collecting stories. and I got to show off where we live a bunch, which forced me to really think about what I love about living here, why we stay even when I am haunted by so very much here, even when my feet are itchy with want of change, even when it rains and rains and rains and I realize that this is normal for this little neck of the woods. so I was a tourist in my own town, hiking waterfalls I haven't visited in years, popping into little shops downtown I didn't even know existed. it's good to have company, too, because eventually they all leave and I am so grateful by that time for the peace and slowness of my family and household that it feels lovely and not boring or impossible anymore to just be the four of us, to just live in the woods and that be enough.

our days are a never-ending tangle of narnia and pirates and whatever else jamin happens to think of in the moment. he is king peter chasing larryboy around the kitchen table and then jack from "the magic treehouse" fighting the white witch in the land of dinosaurs. cora can pretend to be a turtle in any situation, no matter the setting or the other characters. we are pirates, we are chess pieces, we are tree spirits and mermaids. it is beautiful and exhausting and silly all at once. jamin loves books on tape and cora loves the marble game mancala (she is actually very good at it). it is a chore to get jamin out of the house most days. I need more of a plan on a day-to-day basis because we all do best that way, but mostly I just want at least ten minutes every hour to myself to read a library book or just to think about something other than the demands of my children. feeding them is a full-time job. but there is something lovely in that, too, especially that they want to do so much for themselves in the kitchen these days. and their comfort foods make me proud: jamin begs for lentils (the red ones, not the brown ones), and they will do just about anything for split pea soup.

I love my yoga practice, that time when no one asks me any questions, when I am finally warm enough to feel like myself, learning the edges of what my body can really do. it makes me kinder and calmer and I feel like a dancer for the rest of the day: look at me, the grace I use to reach something down from a high shelf, the poise I have as I bend to tie my shoes without bending my knees. silly, I know, but I love it all the same. and sometimes silly is sanity.

this is the way things are. this is the season, the place, the people, the purpose I am supposed to learn right now. practicing for the christmas pagent yesterday made me feel it all, watching the same kids we've gone to church with all year take on a new role in the same old play, a little taller, a little clearer as they read their lines. my kids look that way to other people, too. "this is kinda boring," jamin-the-shepherd announced halfway through yesterday's practice, a comment his wide-eyed wonder of last year would have never allowed. it may be a kinda boring, but there is comfort in the sameness, too, beauty in the expected, and a gentleness that comes with being still.

wordless wedensday

stuck on bandaids

this week's soundtrack.

if cora had her way she would spend her life covered in bandaids. an injury is not required for a bandaid request, mind you. to cora, bandaids are not only a means to cover a cut or a bug bite, but also a distraction from whatever was causing her tears in the first place, as well as a fashion statement. and once a bandaid goes on, heaven forbid we should suggest she take it off at bath time or, even worse, it should fall off on its own.

unfortunately for cora, because she prefers to wear bandaids recreationally and goes through boxes of them so quickly, her frugal (okay, we are just plain cheap on this one) parents often opt for lower priced bandages which means a decrease in quality as well. often cora can hang on to a bandaid long enough for a rash to develop from the adhesive, not to mention the sticky residue that only comes off with heavy scrubbing. this is especially ironic when she has been wearing the bandaid for no real medical purpose. then she ends up with a rash in a place where there was really nothing wrong to begin with.

we've been home for three weeks. I can't help but think about cora and her bandaids as I putter around my life. life at home has all these tinges of familiarity, but so much is so very different. I'm not working now, but I was when we left. a dear friend has moved just far enough to really be "away." I am homeschooling our kids, but most days I am really not even sure what that means. so I find myself applying bandaids willy-nilly, trying to feel better, to feel healed, to feel something. some of my bandaid choices are good ones, like bikram yoga. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life so I drive down the mountain to the yoga studio and spend an hour and a half staring ay my half-naked self in the mirror while I sweat it all out. if I can do yoga in 105-degree heat I can do the rest of my life, I tell myself. and I could write for days about all I am learning in that hot room. it is my prayer time, my alone time, my workout, and my community all rolled into one. it is a pretty good bandaid. sure beats feeling sorry for myself, another one of my bandaids. or excuse making. or sarcasm. all bandaids I use to tell myself that I deserve to feel crummy for a while and that I might as well wallow in it and let other people know how rotten I feel, too. and reading, how did reading become just another bandaid for me? the more I read the more I know I should just be writing it all down myself, that reading has become an excuse for not writing, an escape into someone else's story instead of capturing my own. and I am working extra hard to avoid the bandaid of busy-ness, being busy out of habit or to avoid dealing with anything meaningful. that is the hardest one of all for me because I want to be in constant motion, even though I know I am being called to something very different right now.
















but, just like cora, eventually I have to figure out what my bandaids (even the good ones) are covering up and how the healing process is really going. so I go into the garden and dig up potatoes eric planted for us last spring. I take the long way home so we can pass connestee falls and walk out on the overlook, just because it's on the way. I go to church even though it sometimes makes me feel even lonelier, so I can walk up front and have someone look me in the eye to remind me "this is his body, broken for you." we bake things, the kids and I, and use up more glue sticks than I ever thought possible because creating is part of healing, part of living, even when it makes big messes. these are the balms and salves that seem to serve me best. I don't even know what it is I am healing from, why I need all these bandaids in the first place, but not knowing seems to be part of the journey right now.

I want life to be big and loud and vibrant all the time, but this season seems to be focused on the quiet and still and gentle parts. the trick is learning how to tell the difference between still and boring, how to savor the quiet without needing to fill it. and I know to get the benefits from this gentler season of life I am going to have to learn to be gentle with myself, even if it means ripping off a few bandaids first.

like butter on hot biscuits

I made biscuits today for the first time in more than four months. turning on the oven made our little cottage so hot this summer, not to mention the lack of counterspace and time. so we made do with the dining hall biscuits all summer. but it does a gal's heart good to have her children say, "these aren't as good as mama's" every time they were served.

today is also the first time I've made biscuits since my aunt denise died. denise taught me to make biscuits in my grandmother's kitchen when I was about cora's age. she'd pull one of the kitchen chairs (that my grandfather made) over to the counter and let me stick my hands right into the bag of white lily self-rising flour. she would cut the shortening into the flour while I dusted a big circle on the counter top. when the dough was rolled out, we'd press circles together using those smurf glasses mcdonald's sold back so long ago. we never made less than two dozen biscuits. only when they were in the oven was I allowed to tiptoe in to wake up my daddy. the promise of hot biscuits was a sure way to rouse even the latest sleeper.

I loved watching my dad eat biscuits. the rest of us ate the with butter or a slice of cheddar cheese in the middle, but my dad would eat at least four, every one of the with different fixings. eggs and bacon, peanut butter, sausage gravy, jelly and butter, corned beef hash: whatever else was being served for breakfast went right inside. and iced sweet tea. all the grown-ups has a big glass of tea with breakfast when we stayed at my grandma's house. I think of her whenever I hear someone crunching ice.

of course the way I made biscuits today would make denise raise her eyebrows and shake her head. I put the flour and the shortening (vegan, organic, of course) in the food processor because I can't seem to avoid big lumps when I try to cut it in with a fork. and I don't use self-rising flour, let alone white lily. today we used almond milk instead of whole milk because that's what we had. but as soon as I had dusted that circle of flour onto the kitchen table, kids came running to make shapes out of dough using cookie cutters (no smurf glasses here). cora always eats at least two biscuits-worth of raw dough, and there's flour on the floor and dough rubbed into jamin's sweatshirt.







we were at my parents' house last weekend. I spent some time with my mom and sister going through scrapbooks my dad had brought up from his trip down to clean out denise's house. we found my grandmother's wedding rings and a cast iron corn gem pan. there were pictures of my dad as a toddler and my grandmother in a bathing suit (her dream was to be a rockette). my dad told stories of his mother dragging him and denise under her bed in a thunderstorm because one of the cows had gotten loose and was banging on the kitchen window. there were old pictures of my parents (which look strangely like eric and I) and baby pictures of me and my sister. a whole life, generations of life even, in cardboard boxes.



we've been home now for five days. we are easing back into life here: seeing friends, going on hikes in our neighborhood, finding books and toys we'd forgotten we owned. there is still some settling in to do. I still have some soul-searching to do on what this next season of life might look like. I'm still coming to grips with the idea that god is calling me to be right here, to just be still for a while. fall is a tricky time for me anyway because I don't like to wear socks and I know winter is coming, but there is beauty to help us ease into the change. and here is a good place to be. here is standing in a kitchen full of furniture my dad made for us and using recipes that are just as full of good stories as they are good flavors. we are living a life someone will try to make sense of from the remnants in a cardboard box some day. we are telling the stories our children will tell. and now is the time to write the stories of peaceful familiarity and ritual and routine to match the stories they'll have of adventure and wandering. and if they think of me every time they eat hot biscuits, that's not too shabby either.

postcards from the edge

life is not a postcard. nothing ever looks as good in person as the picture on the back. and real stories don't fit into that little square, no matter how small you write. nobody sends postcards of the back parking lot of a chinese restaurant with two children playing in a drainage ditch and two adults sitting in front of the dumpsters, one crying hard enough to make her shoulders shake. there aren't postcards that say: "be glad you're not here, because here isn't what I thought it'd be like. here is just like everywhere else, only farther away." nobody sends postcards to say: "when I shrug and laugh that we don't know what we're doing with our lives, I forget about days like today. the days when it is hard to find a decent place to eat and the directions include unmarked roads we can't ever seem to find. days when we're all sick of each other and this whole crazy plan seems like a huge mistake. I forget that waiting for the next adventure often includes huge chunks of actual waiting." nobody sends postcards like that because it is too much like real life. and maybe that is the real lesson: life on the road is just as real. my children can be just as whiny. I can feel just as bogged down or just as overwhelmed as I would at home. who I am doesn't fundamentally change based on geographic location. if I don't like chinese food in north carolina, I still won't like it in maine. and I can be just as miserable about things that hardly even matter in our car as I can in our kitchen. and for now, this IS our real life. I kept telling the camp staff that this summer: "stop waiting for real life to start after college. this IS your real life!" and this is mine. on the road, in the car, in a state of flux I'm not sure I want to be in: all of this is just as real as the rest of it. even the fall-aparts in the middle of nowhere.

but there are reasons to be glad life is not a postcard. real stories can never fit in that square, no matter how small you write because real stories are big and need hand motions and funny voices and interruptions and digressions. and if folks don't send postcards of the back parking lots of chinese restaurants, they'll miss out on some pretty amazing moments. moments that need to be recorded, filed away, because those are the real stories of the journey.