Salt

I can't tell if the crunchy stuff in my salad is salt or dirt.  I didn't rinse the greens from the farmers market because I assumed they were already clean, but I'm thinking now that I was very wrong about that, and now I'm sure that I should watch my salad very closely as I eat it because there is a good chance I'll end up eating a bug if I don't.  You should always look at your food while you're eating it.  I've seen lots of half-eaten bugs in my time as a waitress in a farm-to-table restaurant and I'm sure it's something I don't want to experience.

I'm memorizing a poem as a part of the Writing Workshop I'm currently teaching (despite my lack of qualifications).  The poem is The Happiest Day, by Linda Pastan.  I'll attempt to rewrite it here from memory, right now.

It was early May, I think
A moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered in the background, part of the scenery,
like the houses I grew up in.
And if they would be torn down
that was something I knew but didn't believe.
Our children were asleep or playing,
the youngest as new
as the new smell of lilacs.
And how could I have guessed their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn't even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt on melon
were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they only made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch in the cool morning, sipping hot coffee
behind the news of the day --
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations,
but of how it might feel on my bare shoulder.

If someone could stop the camera then.
If someone could just stop the camera and ask me,
Are you happy?
Perhaps I would have noticed the way
the morning sun shown in the reflected color of lilac.
Yes, I might have said,
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

(Linda Pastan)

So, I almost have it.  I cheated a little.  I'll practice again tomorrow.

There are many lines I love in this poem, but one in particular has been speaking to me recently: The small irritations that are like salt on melon were what I dwelt on, though in truth they only made the fruit taste sweeter. I am becoming more and more aware of myself looking at the small irritations and taking them so very personally.  I've noticed how I notice them, and how they become focal points for my life -- ways to dissect and analyze relationships, or push away, deny, dislike, expect more, etc.  Without too much analysis, let's just say, I notice this line, and I notice that I'm noticing it for a reason.

My blog is looking strange right now, which worries me.  It's says things like 'eggs os' where it used to say Endings & Beginnings.  This makes me nervous because it makes me think I've been hacked again.  We'll see soon enough. I've already found the sweetness from that salted fruit, but if I'm meant to taste it again, so be it.

Also, I'm on Facebook again, so.

Una Poca De Gracia (A Little Bit of Grace)

"What do you do when someone is begging you to help them die?" is the question I received via text from my mom this afternoon.  Earlier she told me that she and my dad were going to visit their long-time friend who was in Intensive Care.  He is around my dad's age, I believe.   He and my dad worked together many years ago at the State Penitentiary.  My parents knew him before he had an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down.  From what I remember, he fell from a ladder while cutting branches from a tree in his front yard.  He's lived an excruciatingly difficult but full life in a wheelchair since then, with the support of his dedicated and resilient wife.  I saw he and his wife during my most recent trip home and spent some time talking to them.  He is bright, witty, and sarcastic.  His wife is gentle, hopeful, and adoring.

I don't know the details, but something happened recently that has made his health decline rapidly.  He is in the hospital today with tubes in his throat and on support, but he is coherent and desperate. I've had honest conversations with my parents about him recently.  They've told me that he has been surrendering.  They've told me that he is through with his struggle.  He has nothing left in him.  He has been honest and frank about his experience as a quadriplegic, he has never really painted it as a blessing to have survived that fall with such consequences.

As a young girl I remember being so intrigued by his story.  He had children, just like my dad.  He was doing something I've seen my own father do in our front yard.  He fell.  My dad never did.  I imagined what it would be like to have a dad that was so completely changed.  I remember feeling so fortunate.  I never want to make my own fortune out of someone else's pain, but it reminded me, as a child, that things can be taken from you in a moment, and that's something I've never forgotten.

So, my mom asked me that question and I started to answer from the heart.  And all I could think of was PRAY.  You pray.  You pray to anything, anyone, any entity.  You just throw your words and your compassion and your faith into the wind and hope that it lands someplace where it will land softly; some fertile ground where it will be tended by caring hands.  It's all you can do.  You pray for his relief, you pray for his family's relief from grief, you pray for peace.  It's all you can do, and that's not enough in those moments when your friend of several decades is begging you to help him leave his pain and the burden of his body.  But, I really think that's all there is.

I'm not of any religious conviction.  I've tried, and nothing has fit me.  But I am sure that living a spiritual life is possible without ever knowing of one god or entity, or following any specific scripture.  It's just that willingness to see another person suffering, to not turn away, and to pray for their comfort and peace.

I don't want to forget that there is suffering in this world.  I don't want to neglect my obligation to pray and hold light and send out as much love as I am able.  I know that I can do this by acknowledging with gratitude all the beauty and joy with which I am surrounded. And I know that I can do this by acknowledging the pain and suffering of others, in all it's manifestations, many of which are invisible to the eye.

Tonight I'll pray for him, and his wife and children.  Tonight I'll pray because all we can do is hope for a little bit of grace in the moments when we are stripped of our power and dignity, when we are in pain or suffering.

When I'm Sixty-Four

On Monday my mom turned 64, and tomorrow so will my dad.  I don't know the exact age they were when they began dating, but it's been something close to 40 years since then.  When I called to talk to my parents on my mom's birthday, they told me about their shared morning; how my dad woke my mom up with a blueberry pastry adorned with a candle and then played the Beatles song 'When I'm 64.'   They explained that at some point during the early stages of their relationship, my dad heard this song and pointed out that one day, they would listen to it together on their 64th birthdays.  

My heart melted.  And I've been thinking about it since then.  

For a while now I've been considering the price we pay for our independence.  I've been thinking about all that we give away with each relationship.  I know that we learn and grow from each shared experience, but what has lingered with me is the sense that there are parts of me that I've given to others in the hope that it would be the one that lasted, and that those parts of myself are lost now,  in the way that I know I carry parts of others who have loved me.  They aren't scars or wounds or markings.  To me, the things I keep from each relationship are alive and need tending and call for attention at times.  They are feelings and memories and an ethereal presence.  I imagine that in a marriage, these same feelings exist.  The memories and feelings of time past, hurts healed, and shared joys and losses linger in each and in between both partners. The difference is that they are collected and shared in a sacred union between two people.  That the burden of all of the things and people they have known and have been are shared. 

When I recently wrote about love, I wrote this:  

LOVE is a burden.  Love is a heavy burden.  Sometimes someone comes along and helps us with it, the way my twin brother would walk behind me on the stairs in high school and lift my back pack just enough to make it weightless on my shoulders.  But when there isn't someone to lighten the load, we carry it alone on our backs and in our pockets and it's all quite heavy.  When we give it to someone and they don't accept it, what they give back weighs twice as much, so often we get heavier throughout our lives.  Some people take it and keep it.  When they do, they put it somewhere special and admire it often, like a painting or a sculpture.  They keep it safe and it makes them feel good.  Everyone is lighter then.  Babies always do this, and our truest loves do too, but even they sometimes misplace it in a move. 

I found a way to excuse myself from the commitment of marriage when I was younger, and what I've learned to do since then and in every relationship I've had is run when it gets uncomfortable.  Turn away when it stops making sense or reject when it feels like it's coming too close to taking anything away from my life.  What I've called strength, in choosing to avoid marriage and it's constraints, has been an avoidance of obligation, commitment, and full acceptance of another.  I wonder how this manifests in my relationship with self?

Maybe it's a lot to take away from a really beautiful moment and story.  I'm not missing the good in it.  I am beyond proud and honored to have the parents I have.  As an adult I am constantly seeing more clearly the people they are and just how lucky I am to know them. I am grateful.  And I am grateful for the reflection this has brought to me.  

I'm already more than half-way to 64, and I haven't found my love.  I'm not even sure that I've ever wished for it, or believed it was possible.  But now I do, and I do.