quiet, and unquiet, in fullness and on the ride

There’s quiet, and there’s quiet and the quiet that this space has been is only a pause and mostly it’s because the rest of my world is most decidedly unquiet.  And then when there are pockets of space, I see them as holy, as sanctuary, and I’ve been trying to honor those places, these commas to my run-on-sentence-life, so I’m not rolling it up tight like the toothpaste, pushing and squeezing until it’s all out there.

But it has been full.  Full of quiet, and not-so-quiet; of sunshine bringing rivulets of sweat, and the cool breeze that makes me tighten my shoulders inward, curl into myself, and find that I’m always being curled into.

There was this ropes course, that was one thing.  And here’s what I can tell you:  balanced on a wire thirty five feet in the air, I am still me.  Thinking it all out, breathing to pace my brain, and though the birds sang me a song, and my face felt the cool shadow of the trees, though the muscles in my calves flexed this way and that to hold a firm pose, I crossed this high wire with my ever-thinking head.

Here’s some of the not-so-quiet:  this gang of ours knows how to shout and cheer and we did our loudest for Mark, dear ol’ daddy.  A runner since the day I met him, he has found his legs again chasing down backwoods trails in hot pursuit of nothing short of a personal best, and we all wait at the finish line counting minutes.  Cresting the hill, I recognize him immediately, because even at a distance I know that body, the gait of those legs, the posture of his torso thrown into the last strides, and he hears our voices too, knows our call to him, bringing him in, bringing him home.  Each one of us, littlest right up to biggest, then wears smiles long and wide, and that mud-caked daddy tells us his war stories of creek crossings and pricker bushes, and always of the chase.

There have been fevers, little bodies wrung out and hung out, when I’ve long thought this season of sick should be over.  There have been canceled plans, date nights in instead of out, games of t-ball that go on without us.  And then there have been adventures made only in the moment: to say yes without thought or regard, to answer the call to climb a tree, to swing higher and higher, to stay up a teeny weeny bit later.  And all hands on deck, together we built this year’s garden, lumber tacked down and just the right soil mixture and there is mud in all our fingernails for days after until those tiny sprouts of green life push out mightily through the dirt.  And that is just what we are doing here: imperceptible often, ambling toward the light.

And yes, we are full up. And here’s to spilling a little out, and saving some for later.

There is a lot to be said for getting back in the saddle, and here I am, back on this horse, and though I’m not sure what knocked me down or kicked me off (or maybe I just stepped off all on my own because that winding road of walking has beauty that the rider never sees), but I’m swinging my legs over that bare back, and pressing my weight into that spine.  I’m  gathering up that mane in my hands, and can feel it whipping at me in the breeze and I shout “Giddy Up!”

the underneath

The strings are getting twisted and the knots are piling up.  My fingers pick at the threads, trying to tease them apart, but all I can feel are the hard balls that force a staccato stop.  Sometimes I can manage to get a fingernail hold into one and I dig and pull, grasping onto the loose ends, following around the twists of color, but somehow end up tying myself back in again.  It’s a mess.

This, here, is the underneath.  This is the back side of that beautiful tapestry that we’re weaving, the sweep of rainbow glory of my life, my colorful breath, stitched and spun and taken up into a braid upon braid.  But right now?  Right now, it’s tangled and ugly.

But it’s the story that I’m humming to myself as I spin those tazmanian-devil-circles around my kitchen, cutting up food into bite-sized pieces and peeling another banana and picking up the water bottle from the floor for the umpteenth time.   I may have lost track of the narrative, and I may not remember which scene I’m in anymore.  I can’t remember who the good guys are, and where the ogres live.  Because honestly – the Littlest, who just wants his mama, cries when I have to put him down for the two seconds I need to cut the onion, or grab the bag of groceries from the car. (And I’ve almost learned how to chop an onion one handed, because sometimes it’s easier to hold him anyway since he moves at the speed of lightning, don’t you know, and has almost the same effect, too).  And I’m moving as fast as I can to just do the very next thing (and there’s always one more next thing) and I don’t even realize the knots I’ve made out of it all until the end of the day when I collapse on the couch.  (I’m pretty sure my eyes lids fall closed before the little ones’ do).  The underneath is not so pretty.

So while my challenge this year is to see the Story of it all – to hold it, to create it, to tell it, to teach it – right now the only story I can see  has no great character development.  It’s lacking  plot twists and a climax.  There is no great resolution.  But I know it’s only because I’m underneath it all, and I just can’t see it yet.  And it seems like too much work for me to even make some greater sense of this mess.  But, maybe, just maybe, at some point I’ll be able to turn this piece over, feel it’s weight, understand it’s breadth and it’s size.  I’ll get to see it’s edges.  And what about these knots?  The other side of this tangled web of my everyday mess, and theirs, and yours  – it’s all in there, too.  And it will be something to behold.

back to zero

My dad is the kind of dad that has a saying for most things.  Corny and comical, he was not above saying that he’d had a good day at the “orifice” when referencing his office, calling to mind a place where one could easily get lost and stuck, like a dropped hair pin down the drain.  His Saturday errands were never much better, often ending up at the “homeless depot,” that bright orange big box home center, trying to track down a tool of some kind.  Whether he was pulling out a pun, or creating some sort of predictable lingo, my dad could often illicit a grimace from us kids.

At home, around the dinner table, things were no different.  Most nights of my growing up, after the plates had been cleared and we pushed back our chairs from the table, my dad would call his Kitchen Patrol to order.  With his clear directive: “back to zero” we had just one task:  clean up. By this he meant that the kitchen, after a full day of three square meals and all the requisite mess that goes into making them, needed to glisten like it was brand new.  If all the day’s mess-making was added up cereal bowl plus butter dish in the equation, than this cleaning – the wiping and scrubbing and putting away – was the negative algebra necessary to balance it all out.  That, along with “completing the magic cycle,” which in his vernacular meant seeing to it that our dirty dishes ended up in the dishwasher instead of on the counter above it.

There was always camaraderie in the process.  When we were younger, my dad stuck around to make sure we got stuff done properly, but as we got older my sister and I were left on our own.  Of course we grumbled and made excuses – oh the homework! so much! really! – but we took up our dishtowels and stood in position.  If it was my arms and hands that turned red and raw from the hot water, it was hers that were at the ready with a towel, drying and reaching to the high cabinets to put dishes away.  And really, how else is one supposed to learn the art of snapping towels?  No child should be without this skill.

This language of completion, of cycles and clean slates, like anything with such childhood repetition, has stuck with me.  Standing in the kitchen now of my adulthood,  nary a night goes by that these refrains don’t chug like a train along those  railroads tracks deep in my brain, the ones that were laid a long, long time ago.  While my dad was teaching us about fair work, about responsibility, about the nitty-gritty of scrubbing pots and belonging to community, he was also teaching us about fresh starts.  Each day brings it’s own grime, and the dirt of living with each other stains us.  It takes diligent work, knowing how and when to say sorry, how to fix our mistakes, how to reach through to each other.  But each morning, we are “back to zero,” ready to face another day. Nourishing ourselves and one another is not without mess. In our house now, this means fresh starts whenever we ask for them.

My kids are still young yet for manning their own station as we strive to get “back to zero” every night in the kitchen, but they are learning their own small part in the process.  Each night when they set, and then later clear, the table, they see how they contribute to our family community.  And right now, the job for Mark and I  is to take up our station and do the work of scrubbing those dishes, completing the cycles, magic and otherwise, and putting glasses away, ready to start the next day new again.

This is part of a series that I  post occasionally about the  family sayings and folklore that are meaningful to me, especially in my family history, as a way to explore my own Story.  Similar posts can be found here: ‘near nough.  and here: it’s not that windy.  Tell me some of yours!

family maxims: it’s not *that* windy

There is a story that swirls around my family, of a long time ago.  The details are non-essentials; the lack of specifics invites the listener to settle in and make this story one’s own.  Like most good stories, this one has taken on a life it’s own, and it’s boiled down essence has become a maxim of sorts.  It’s a parable in my lineage full of it’s own teaching, providing my family with a common language.

This story begins on a crisp spring day more than thirty years ago.  My parents were young, younger than I am now (a fact that has me doing mental gymnastics to even consider).  They were married but my sister and I were only unspoken glimmers of hope for some time in the future.

In order to understand this story you need to know a few things: my dad, this humble pie guy on the outside, is pretty remarkable.  He’s the sort of guy that you could know for a while, and think you have a good sense of him.  I mean, he’s pretty straight forward.  He likes his coffee black.  He works hard, and plays hard. He’s never more at peace that when he’s in the woods.  But he’ll surprise you.  Casually, in conversation, talking about this episode of Amazing Race where they were skydiving, and all of a sudden he’s telling stories of jumping out of planes.  And what’s that? When did you do that, you say? Oh, when you were a Green Beret, right.  Because he had nothing else to do.  That’s my dad.

My renaissance man of a father at one point had his pilot’s license, my guess is as a result of his time in the army.  And when you are married with no kids, sometimes it’s fun to jump in a plane and fly around a bit.  Check out the scenery from a different vantage.  My folks were making plans to do just that on this spring day.  The dogwoods are beginning to bloom, and the air smells of fecund mud.  But there is a breeze, as most spring days have, and it’s this breeze that is a point of contention.

A breeze that is mild, like spring’s gentle kisses, while sipping coffee on the back deck, can, however, be difficult to predict and treacherous to navigate with a small plane and a mere hobbyist’s interest in flight.

“It’s not looking good to fly today” one of them says, watching the trees shake their budding branches against the pale blue sky.  “It’s windy out here.”

“What do you mean?” the other responds, surprised at the declaration.  And here it comes: the words that echoed, not just that day, bouncing around the air, picked up by the birds as they chatter to each other, but echoed through the years.  “It’s not that windy.”   The qualifier in that sentence is doing all the work.  A mere matter of a different perspective, perhaps, or a strong desire to hold fast to plans.  A simple conviction that one opinion is more right than another, or merely semantics arguing the same thing.  It doesn’t much matter, and I’m not sure either one of them knew.

I don’t think they ended up flying that day. I don’t know how they decided this, or who spoke loudest.  I don’t even know who was on what side of the discussion.  But I do know that the conversation escalated enough to highlight both the typical differences in perspective of my parents, and to become endeared to us family legacy.

With repetition, this vignette of a particular place and time has given us a vocabulary to use with each other.  “It’s not that windy.” It’s quipped and quoted from all sides of my family, including my married-into-the-family husband. This can be offered as reminder of perspective. Where is the line between sweet breeze and blustery storm?  And who gets to draw that line?  It can infuse lightness and humor into a potential escalation, and reminds us that we share this vocabulary.  It makes us insiders together, in on the joke, and helps us find a bond of togetherness, even if it’s only in that moment of this common story.  More often than not, it’s the jolt that I need to figure out which battles are worth fighting.  Because, you see, sometimes it is that windy.  And sometimes it’s not.

***

This is the beginning of a series that I will post occasionally about the  family sayings and folklore that are meaningful to me, especially in my family history, as a way to explore my own Story.  A similar post, that I wrote last year, can be found here: ‘near nough. What are some of yours?

broken car mirrors

I was backing out of the garage the other day, my body yanked around to see the view behind me, when I heard it.  “What was that, Mommy?” asked the already-anxious-about-loud-noises-in-the-car five year old.  And just like that, my careless precision had not just bumped the side view mirror (which I may or may not have done countless times before) but smashed it to pieces of plastic and glass.  In my frustrated haste to successfully get all three Little Ones, with shoes and jackets and school bags, into the car, I was careless.  Isn’t this the danger then – that these things become  too familiar (like backing out of my garage countless times a day) and I get numb to them?  I wasn’t paying attention.  I was wrapped up in the chaos of our morning routine, tired already with the day looming ominously large in front of us.  I called Mark and cried into the phone with him, not because of the broken mirror (though there’s that), but because I knew what this broken mirror was reflecting back to me.  In those shards of distorted light, I saw that I needed to slow down and pay attention.  I need to take care.

Pay attention to this: the 13 month old who grows like a fairy tale weed right before my eyes.  I can’t say he toddles so much any more because it’s more sturdy and sure than any toddle ought to be.   He finds ways to play his own games with me, games that tell me to pay attention, to him, right now.  He pushes the buttons on the dishwasher and then make those flirty eyes with  me.  He laughs, throwing his head back exposing that kissable neck, and runs away as fast as he can, daring me to catch him.  (Don’t worry, I do.)  Or he finds just the right laundry basket, because goodness knows there are plenty around.  But he finds the one that has all of the folded clothes inside.  And one by one, he takes them all out, making a display on the bedroom floor.  And when I push him in the direction of all the unsorted, unfolded, un-everything clothes at his disposal?  He lays his body full out on the ground, kicking his feet and offering up his best imitation tantrum.  If I’m honest, these baby tantrums turn me to mush, and I love him all the more dearly for his ambition.  So, yes, love, I’ll pay attention to you.

And this: see these bodies, unabashedly naked, small but not so tiny anymore.  Our bath times have become circus like, as you can imagine, all three kids in a regular ol’ bath tub.  The new trick last night was from the Littlest, who stood proudly sticking out his belly and patting it with such pride.  And then there’s the lemonade station (please, oh please just pretend yellow, right?)  in the corner where the Eldest is brewing and pouring and serving it up to anyone who will answer.  The Middlest is lost in her own world, which I can’t believe is even possible in this arrangement, but she is singing and humming and la-la-la-ing to herself, letting herself feel the water.  I’m slowing down, taking notice to this, because I know that it’ll be all too soon when everyone needs their own space, their own privacy.  Their bodies won’t be mine to marvel at, and we’ll be hustling them towards showers to move along to the next thing.

And there’s the Eldest learning to read; and the Middlest making friends.  There is the Littlest pushing furniture around and blowing kisses.  There are more arts and crafts projects that I ever could have imagined, and I worry that someday I will be help responsible for the number of trees we’ve used up. There are scraps of paper everywhere.  On good days, I pick them up and smile at the experiment of it all.  Other days, I grumble over the tedium – scraps, everywhere.  I’m paying attention, but maybe to the wrong thing.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t usually think of myself as the kind of person who needs to be reminded to slow down.  My gears are set pretty low.  I’m more of an ambler, a putz-er, a mull-er.  But then it happens:  the daily grind wears me down.  It’s like the game that Grant likes to play, outside at the swing set.  He spins the swing around and around, and it lifts higher and higher until he can’t crank it up any more.  Then: let it go and watch it fly.  The swing spins, uncontrollably, barreling around back down again, with no regard to anything in it’s way.  I can unravel carelessly, too.  If I’m not paying attention, mirrors break.  And sometimes that’s a good thing.

I know that I’m not unique in this.  I need to pull back and see the bigger picture.  I need to take the long view, and see the panorama.  Because without the bigger story, I can’t make sense of the baby tantrums, let alone the big ones.  But when my nose is stuck on one particular page, in one scene of the story, it’s easy to get careless and forget to notice.  Or worse yet, to notice the things that don’t matter (the unsorted laundry, the uneaten vegetables).

Tonight, Mark is picking up a new side view mirror for my car.  And if all goes well, I will have the full view by morning.