One Cold Day in July.

July used to be arms sticky with sugary popsicle juice.  That is, July days of my childhood, loud with cicadas, drenched in sweat.  The memories feel good.  On this July day, it's dreary and relatively cold.  Go figure, 66 degrees in the middle of summer.  So, potato soup on the stove, the Japanese version of Wicked playing in the background, a bit of puttering, a tad of playing marbles with the boys, my mind wanders.  Maybe it's the lack of sunshine, but I feel a bit morose today.  Sometimes you can't help but think when you find yourself in that stuck place.  The dryer's timer croaks.  I methodically pull out socks, underwear, shirts. I fold them with slow deliberate movements. I try to apply my yoga stuff, you know, the "breathe in and out slowly and intentionally" thing.  Just to see if I can get unstuck, free of this way of living that is taking me nowhere.  All I come up with is question after question.  No answers in sight in this blasted wilderness of the soul.  

A body's gotta wonder if it is worth it to live up to an ideal.  Why be honest, upfront, forthright? Why seek to expose the problem to facilitate a solution? Why hope at all that things might change if only you follow the higher road?  The air is so thin on this higher road.  The problem was laid bare only to be allowed to fester with new hypocrisy.  And honesty? It's just a lonely word... thanks Billy Joel.

It's been asked before and I doubt I'll be the last to wonder why the mean ones, the jerks of the world always seem to get away with stuff and live a happy life.  Careless of the hurt they've inflicted, getting away with character assassination, and enjoying all the perks life can offer.

There are plenty of answers.  I've been through them all:

1. "Oh, but are they're really not happy inside." (If the outside is any indication, I beg to differ)
2. "It will catch up with them some day." (They seem to be pretty fast outrunning whatever it is that's supposed to catch them)
3. "It will help you grow." (I would have rather remained naive about certain things)

And on and on the platitudes go.  The fact remains that things are broken and I'm tired of being the one to have to tip toe through the shards of busted relationships as others shut the door and go their merry way.  I don't want to be a victim, I do try to keep a positive outlook, but I don't seem to be getting over it.  Tough some say, I should just get over it and move on. As if it were easy as skipping your way down the sidewalk without stepping on cracks.

It's a human thing, N.T. Wright says, to long for justice, relationship, and things put to right.  On this July day, sipping hot tea while watching the drizzle hover outside, I long for things to be fixed, relationships mended and justice served.  In the big things and in the little things.  I notice a shift in my perspective, though. The answers given to my questions by society, seem to spring from a deep sense of vendetta and they don't satisfy my craving.  Frankly, I don't wish them unhappiness, nor that the same evil they've perpetrated will come to bite their rear, and I definitely don't care to vanquish them on the ground of being a better person, morally or spiritually or ethically.  I desire something different. I wish that maybe once in a while I could enjoy smooth sailing, too.  

Ultimately I have to realize that it rains and shines on the bad as well as the good.  So, no praying for floods on others who may have wronged me, just asking for a little ray of sunshine in my patch of sky.  I hope my change of perspective is a step in the right direction.

Silence.

There is no music in the house this morning.  The chattering of the children at breakfast has ceased.  There is only crying.

We live in a world of death.  Death is everywhere. Always.  We don't think about it much, otherwise what would we get accomplished?  Some will tell you that you can't live that way, thinking about possibilities all the time.  But death is there.  You can drive by any hospital and rest assured someone in there is fighting for their next breath, doctors are trying to keep connected the gossamer thread of life of one of their patients.  You can drive on any road for that matter and know that it has seen some life slip away.  We don't think about death much, until the phone rings and the world goes all topsy turvy when someone on the other end of the line says the word.

And so it was this morning as one of my sons' coaches called to let us know that one of the girls on the team was killed in a car accident.  The world is sitting askew.  We're all reeling badly from the blow.  One child went back to bed.  One child roams the house aimlessly.  I cry.

They're learning young that life is fragile and can shatter swiftly.  Just yesterday, at the end of the year party, they laughed, they played and bantered and a few short hours later one of them passed from this life.

There are really no words for a family that has just lost a daughter, and it's not just rhetoric.  There really aren't.  No amount of words can heal the gaping, horrid wound that gashes their souls at this time.  Words won't stop the hemorrhage in their broken hearts.

In our humanity we try to make sense of this as our inner parts try to grasp the workings of death.  Death is unpredictable, random.  So we don't believe it,  we get angry at it, we bargain with it, we get sad, and somehow we try to accept it.  Then we do it all over again, in no specific order.

There will be time to reflect and let reality work its way into life, but for now we must live in the chaos of unwanted change.

All the way back.

It's a slow day.  Not that there isn't anything to do.  Believe me, if I only opened my eyes enough to care I'd be assaulted by a cluttered home and a raging river of laundry.  Nor is it that I am bored.  Today I am slow, as I live in this surreal time of grief, jet lag and a hard to swallow diagnosis.  Nothing threatening, just out of my control to resolve, nothing I could have done to prevent it.  Nothing.  And in this nothing, I snuggle myself tight on the damp earth at the bottom of the pit.  I don't even think it's depression, but just the need to glide quietly through this world for a time.  The bottom of the pit with its warm humid odor-of-dirt feels comfortable.  It's the consciousness that you can't go any lower and you can rest before resuming the struggle to get out, because I foresee that it will come.  For now it's comfortable, I'm at the bottom and content to be there.

I haven't stopped, I've just slowed down.  My mind is on "strictly necessary" mode.  I breathe, I walk, I do things that must be done, without prioritizing, without order.  Not thinking brings relief, it's not suffering.  Don't feel sorry for me.  I want this, I need this.  I disengage in order to conserve my soul's energy, which is precious and approaching empty.  The normal noise of whiny children, crying, laughing does not reach me, does not touch me.  There's a birthday to prepare tomorrow, yet I don't fret, I don't worry and over think. It will get it done, somehow, I will use the strength I have.

It's funny to not feel the struggle that is so much part of my life.

A close friend's death is a considerable blow, compounded by the fact that you always wish you could have said or done more.  It begs the question, "More of what?"  Compounded more yet by the realization that you can't be there to pick up the pieces, hold hands, cry and listen to the desperation of a mother who has lost a daughter at such a young age and is now left with a son-in-law and two grandsons, as old as they may be, who still needed their wife and mother.  Then you add the thought that your own mother leaned so much on this friend, who was part of her daily life and her life as a whole.  Thirty years.  A long time. It could have been more.  We wish it'd been more.

Having to leave the day of the funeral and not being able to participate and follow the protocol of closure was difficult.  It was even more difficult to know that I could not support my own mother; she could not lean on my arm and rest her grief there.  As the shock wears off, I cannot be there to help her deal with the daily, at least for a while, knocking next door and not having her friend open and ask her inside.

So I am back to this place that is nominally home.  It is comfortable to be back in my own house.  Comfortable because of familiarity, not that visceral connection to my own roots that still surprises me every time I get off a plane and head for the hills, literally.  Even with all its idiosyncrasies, the home of my youth, the origin of me, is comfortable.  That valley hemmed in by mountains and hills, dotted with houses I know by heart, is home.  In its stifling heat and sticky air, it's still home.  Crazy drivers and all.

It was hard to come back this year.  I got too comfortable.  With friends who cared enough to want to see me, and friends who drove in from another country to spend a few days with us.  An uncharacteristic impromptu decision that pleasantly surprised me and made me long for those relationships even more intensely now that time and space separate us.  Yes, I miss it.  I miss talking at a subsurface level, a second nature we developed growing up I guess, a cultural training, maybe a product of gregariousness, of the endless hours spent talking about anything and everything that inexorably led to knowing each other, and developing a level of comfort beyond the small talk.  It was all recaptured in the one on one visits with friends of long ago and newly made friends.  Focused friendship is what I lack, what I desire.

It is a day to rest, to lie away from the filtered rays of sunshine. I don't want to think of getting up and going, although I know at some point I must and I will, but not yet.  Not quite yet.

[Note: this post was written after I came back from my home last October. Just hadn't gotten around to posting it.]

Life's torches.

The Olympics are proceeding fast and furious among major upsets, unbelievable wins and breathtaking ski tricks...wardrobe malfunctions aside.

I would like to celebrate the quitters.  Not because the quit, but because they knew when to quit.  So I salute Evgeni Plushenko for choosing to bow out of the competition last night.  Yes, he could have gone on and inspired millions by suppressing his pain and risking his wellbeing for the chance to give Russia another medal.  While all that is noble and romantic, his choice favored the long run.  Because after a few years and maybe even much sooner the throngs of people who went to see him, camera in hand and went home disappointed, feeling shorted one miracle of skating, will forget about last night. They won't even remember how to say, let alone spell his name.

By his choice, he has gained more than a golden disk to hang on a wall, he has gained years of enjoying running and playing with his children, dancing with his wife and living a life with no regrets.

Thank you Mr. Plushenko for showing the world that you don't have to win it all the time and that some things are more precious than gold.