miscellanea

Andrew Wyeth, “Two Figures in a Dory”, 1937, watercolor.

https://youtu.be/TpO_8tk6yNQ

our arms wrapped around the other, bodies moving together like two halves of something greater than ourselves.

friends circled around, each in their own coupling, smiling in their own worlds; our son safe and sleeping in our room.

the windows wide open, snow falling melted in the warmth of that attic, faces glittered with love and sweat.

we counted down into the next year breathless, loud, together for the first time we kissed and the world disappeared.

on the summit of our great love we surveyed the magnitude: we did it. nothing can touch us.

two years later.

the walls around us are different, dust and cactus swapped for snow we count down in silence, in our own heads.

friends scattered in far flung places, we sit in rooms alone with windows wide, begging a breeze to rustle the still misery.

our arms were never strong enough, the summit too high, the view too beautiful, the greater thing too great.

“In the secular night you wander around alone in your house. It’s two-thirty. Everyone has deserted you, or this is your story; you remember it from being sixteen, when the others were out somewhere, having a good time, or so you suspected, and you had to baby-sit. You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream and filled up the glass with grapejuice and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller with his big-band sound, and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney, and cried for a while because you were not dancing, and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple. Now, forty years later, things have changed, and it’s baby lima beans. It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice. This is what comes from forgetting to eat at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully, drain, add cream and pepper, and amble up and down the stairs, scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl, talking to yourself out loud. You’d be surprised if you got an answer, but that part will come later. There is so much silence between the words, you say. You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse. You say, I have too much white clothing. You start to hum. Several hundred years ago this could have been mysticism or heresy. It isn’t now. Outside there are sirens. Someone’s been run over. The century grinds on.”

Andrew Wyeth, “Airborne” (1996)

life is not stagnant, and time moves on regardless, permission not asked.

i am growing old(er) with you and someday we will be old together. i cry about this sometimes. about being old about being together i can’t imagine forever like that.

keep reading: i love you, but sometimes it’s hard to love you. i know it’s hard to love me, too. sometimes forever feels like a long time and other times, it doesn’t feel long enough.

vines grow toward sunlight but people grow all over not a singular reaching

time passes, we change and grow, metamorphose into someone else faces different, broken in like leather the hair framing them frizzled out or gone.

my voice won’t sound like it does now, my smile will change, my eyes will get foggy, you won’t see the green. my body will probably be soft and fat, which you will secretly like.

you will likely be bald and skinny like gandhi but without the glasses because you won’t go to the doctor. the only fat on you will be a tiny pot belly, like your father’s. you’ll probably walk just like him, hands behind your back, impossibly slow, but walking like you hold all time in your pocket, and you are an easy observer of the world.

i don’t care what we look like, how old we get as long as we are old together.

(how much you love me)

---------------

do you know how much I love you?

you asked, half joking, 

half serious.

then you told me how you did,

in a way only you could,

so casual, yet so serious,

briefly, because you don’t elaborate,

because “that’s unnecessary”.

but you saw the necessary,

meera babu—

your dark brown hair looks like silky kitten’s fur swirled around your crown, perfectly flat except that one piece, swiveling right and left as you greet the neighbors.

your tiny hands grip the stroller’s handrail, and you lean forward. big brown eyes wide, dutifully, gratefully lapping up all the life given to you.

the sun shines in an unusually blue sky, the green leaves appeared suddenly— like birth, so long awaited, then in an instant— there is this brand new thing.

like you, my little one, meera chote— you were so small, so fragile, just fifteen months ago. and then suddenly, in an instant— there you are:

walking talking lifting arms and eyes up in anticipation— this brand new thing.

xoxo mama

a very important person reminded me that i sometimes forget how good i have it. i get impatient, sharp-edged, jittery, anxious, and undone.

today i felt undone. my little babu looked at me with his big brown eyes and stretched out his chubby little hands, clutching my flannel pj pants in his perfect, tiny fists. he clung to me like a man clinging to his life. he looked at me like i have all the answers, all the remedies, all the good in the universe to make his world right.

clearly, i don’t. i didn’t feel like reading goodnight, moon 50 times today. i didn’t feel like sitting on the floor and making barnyard animal noises with his farm figurines today. i didn’t feel like listening to classical music this afternoon. i didn’t feel like speaking french to him at all. i didn’t make him eat a serving of vegetables today. i didn’t care if all we did was cuddle and watch tv all day long. 

but you know what? i want my baby to know that some days stink. sometimes your feelings don’t make sense, and that’s okay. what’s important is to remember the good. how we’ve been blessed, because there are so many ways we’ve been blessed.

today, the most beautiful snowflakes fell, and babu and i enjoyed some sweet cuddles, smiles, and giggles. his dad is working long, long days to provide for us. we are so loved. and that makes today a good day.

Curving around those roads, when your spirits fly high, when your eyes can’t move fast enough to gather all the glory around, there is a moment when it opens up to you, cresting one of the big hunch-backs, revealing the panoramic beauty--

There is peace here. It settles, in the corn field, stirred up, once in a while, by the neighboring wind flustering the corn into rattling whispers before it gathers itself still.

It hangs suspended, invisible, but sensed, like the constant hum of cicadas and crickets, the white noise that keeps us sane out here. It wanders in unexpectedly, but naturally, like the feral chicken, that steps through like the world is its coop, and it is.

Make a list, she said. I can do that, I said— carving tick marks in the blue book they gave us nailing to the page my List of Lists to Make:

- what I like about ___ - what I dislike about ___ - what good ___ contributes - what danger ___ contributes

Satisfied, I jaunted out: I figured out how to take the whole of you, of us, of this, and squeeze it all in a bottle, a neat list with a tight lid I can cap, tighten, leave on the counter, and walk away from you us this.

But I can’t walk away from this or from us or from you. We are inexplicably intermingled forever, unintentionally, though that doesn’t make the bond less strong.

I tried to make the lists like fences, something to herd all of the sheep of the misgivings doubts fears we both feel.

But their arms aren’t enough, they stretch out, and some wandering animal slips through, the others follow unblinking.

There’s a song that goes “if my heart wasn’t such a jungle maybe you wouldn’t feel so all alone and if your heart wasn’t such an ocean I wouldn’t sink like a stone”

And that’s where I stand: with fences that can’t keep anything inside with your heart swallowing me up into darkness with you lost in the labyrinth of mine.

I’m plunging deeper into the watery depths, drowning, flailing and thrashing— I need a perimeter, a fence, a boundary— tell me where this ends before there is no light, before it’s too late and you’ve swallowed me whole:

I went to Nineveh before the swallowing—

I had already fallen in love with far too many postage stamps, when you appeared on my doorstep wearing nothing but a postcard promise.

No. Appear is the wrong word. Is there a word for sucker-punching someone in the heart?

Is there a word for when you are sitting at the bottom of a roller coaster, and you realize the climb is coming, that you know what the climb means, that you can already feel the flip in your stomach from the fall, before you have even moved— is there a word for that? There should be.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard. Only so many in a phone call. Only so many into space, before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.

It is hard to build a body out of words. I have tried. We have both tried. Instead of laying your head on my chest, I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs, who stays up all night playing his drum set. The neighbors have complained: they have busy days tomorrow. But he keeps on thumping through the night, convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect.

Instead of holding my hand, you tell me about the sandwich you made for lunch, the way the pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce.

Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall. Even I know that.

Repeat the same mistakes over and over, and you don’t get any closer. You— never get any closer.

Is there a word for the moment you win tug-of-war? When the weight gives, and all that extra rope comes hurtling towards you, how even though you’ve won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was.

I would have said it, when we were finally alone together on your couch, neither one of us with anything left to say. Still now, I send letters into space, hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems;

“For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:10-14 ESV)

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Exodus 14:13-14 ESV)

This weekend was a weekend of fear, sadness, an overwhelming hollowing-- a shelling-out of my selfishness, self-reliance, and the foolhardy belief that I understand most things. God allowed me to witness one of my worst nightmares, allowed me to hold-- literally-- my worst fear in my hands this morning. The same questions that everyone asks soared into my mind like an ocean wave of arrows, landing in different places and at different times, but somehow all at once-- leaving both a feeling of small cavities and huge, echoing caverns in my understanding. There were other heavy things; this weighed most.

Now on the other side of Sunday, the evening, when the morning feels so distant and when my son is happy and warm and curled up in my arms and when church finally came and we sang

Let us become more aware of your presence Let us experience the glory of your goodness

Over and over, the more polished words of my choked out prayer this morning were sung by my favorite congregation. I know and can feel solidly, viscerally the goodness of God. I know he is in the deepest sadnesses, and he is already ahead of us, preparing the way for us, preparing us for better things to come.

But, simultaneously, I am hollow. There are so many empty spaces in my spirit-- carved out by confusion and questions that may never be answered fully. Their edges are raw and burning and itching as the spaces ripped open, already trying to heal. 

This morning, I drove home in tears: WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? Where is your goodness in this? How...? I prayed for peace. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, throughout the day, he has poured it over me. His grace met me at the end of my understanding and poured over me like warm water, filling in my hollow places, and giving peace and rest when no answers could speak.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at, You can let them look at you. But do not mistake eyes for hands or windows or mirrors. Let them see what a woman looks like. They may have not ever seen one before. If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch, You can let them touch you. Sometimes, it is not you they are reaching for. Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer — another woman. But their hands found you first. Do not mistake yourself for a guardian or a muse or a promise or a victim or a snack. You are a woman — skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat. You are not made out of metaphors, not apologies, not excuses. If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold, You can let them hold you. All day they practice keeping their bodies upright. Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural. Still strains the muscles, hold firms the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you, Admit they do not have the answers they thought they would by now. Some men will want to hold you like the answer. You are not the answer. You are not the problem. You are not the poem or the punch-line or the riddle or the joke. Woman, if you grow up the type men want to love, You can let them love you. Being loved is not the same thing as loving. When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands. It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home. Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of women men will hurt. If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along. It is hard to stop loving the ocean even after it has left you gasping — "salty." So forgive yourself for the decisions you've made. The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night and know this: Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours. Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place. You are a woman who can build it yourself. You are born to build.