...this, perhaps, is how lives are measured, a series of abandonments that we hope beyond reason will eventually be reconciled.~Anthony Doerr (From About Grace)
I listened to the top 40 radio station, and I heard the DJ in her lilting, perfect announcer voice say, "Have you ever worked a jigsaw puzzle, with say 1,000 pieces? You spend all that time and patience on completing the puzzle, and then find you're missing one piece. Well now there's a company who will create that missing piece for you, and you'll get it within two weeks. Hows that for service?"
In the seventies, I walked the campus of the university I attended just outside of Dallas, Texas, looking the part of most any 19-year-old woman of the time--bell bottom hip huggers, tie-dyed shirt, a backpack loaded with heavy textbooks. I belonged to a sorority. I made good grades. I actually liked writing term papers and sequestering myself in the library--books silent, tangible companions. Internally, though, I felt "less than," as if I'd never measure up. Critical of my hair that waved down my back. Oh, how I wanted that straight, sleek hair like Marcia Brady's. Giovanni and I had separated by that point, too, and my unkempt heart felt too wrecked to expose. During this time, another journalism student, a couple of years my senior, befriended me. I felt safe with him, because he was genuinely kind. I found him to be exceptionally smart and funny. Yet I couldn't imagine that he would see anything attractive in me. Every time I was around him, I worried that I'd say something stupid. I doubted that I had anything valuable to offer, so I detached. Avoided him. "If he only knew how defective I was," I thought. I did not let him into the parched, cracked places in my thinking. I let no one in.
Then, a message via Twitter. This individual wondered how I was doing, commented how wonderful it was to learn of my "success" as a published author. We exchanged updates about our lives. I wrote that I was sorry I was "mean" to him in college. He said he'd never thought that, but rather believed that he had avoided me, because he lacked self-confidence, thinking someone like me might not "be in his league." All these years later, both of us perhaps creating that missing piece, reconciling the abandonment of ourselves at that vulnerable time in life when we became tangled in our distorted belief system.
This lovely man shared that he had been married thirty-nine years, (who has been married that long anymore?), has three grown children, five granddaughters and a journalism career that spanned over thirty years. I shared, too, that the lost Italian boyfriend was now my beloved husband of fifteen years, and I have two grown daughters and two grandchildren--incontestable beauty, grace, love, and validation of ourselves threaded throughout the fabric of our timelines.
I contnue to read It's Never Too Late To Begin Again by Julia Cameron. The book contains 12 weeks of material with tasks to complete. One of the assignments is to break up one's life in five-year segments and answer questions that evoke thoughts and emotions and memories. This week I answered questions spanning ages 16-20. Those were hard, lonely years, perhaps hard and lonely for anyone emerging into adulthood. One of the questions Ms. Cameron asked this week: "What were callings you tried and then abandoned?"
I'm unsure if writing poetry would be considered a calling, but for a time during those years I wrote poems, and some were published in the university's literary magazine. I'm not sure when I stopped writing poetry. Or why. After about a year, I abandoned the art form. I've written three or four poems over the last decades, but nothing as prolific as that one year in college. As I remembered myself at that age, I felt great love for that young woman. She did not know her strength. She did not understand the breadth and width of God's grace. I wrote her a poem. I went back to that time in history to honor her courage, her perseverance. She serves me now. I draw on her vulnerability and brave heart. Perhaps she has led me back to poetry and whispers, "Begin again."
Holy Breath
If they'd been looking in the window,
they'd see a girl unmoored.
Like a toy ship stranded on the window sill,
Sails trimmed, but no ocean underneath.
She couldn't have known then the things
she knows now.
Couldn't have seen the horizon that stretched for eternity
like a blue silk cord.
The striving, the shoulds, the musts,
the sheer effort to perform each day stirred no wind,
though she wished it, the wanting not enough.
What came, what let that deep ocean glide in
and swell and clamor around her
was recognition. Inkling.
That she was not small.
That she was no trinket to be admired on a ledge.
Not hidden.
Holy breath in those sails.
"What were callings you tried and then abandoned?"
Years vanish. Months collapse. Time is like a tall building made of playing cards. It seems orderly until a strong gust of wind comes along and blows the whole thing skyward. Imagine it: an entire deck of cards soaring like a flock of birds.~Dani Shapiro
A long time ago, I stood in the home goods section at Walmart. The in-laws were coming to visit and stay with my family. The girls would give up their bedroom, and the grandparents would brave the trundle bed. New sheets were in order. I didn't have much money to spend, but settled on the nicest sheets that Walmart sold, the pattern in the fabric a subtle, lavender Swiss dot. Yesterday I took that same cloth, now splattered with green paint, and covered my current husband's Vespa. The sheet had outlasted a marriage, and survived longer than the lives of those grandparents who had once lain on that Swiss-dotted cotton. And their son, the father of those little girls, gone now too.
Life is fragile. We don't talk about that much in our culture. We think we'll live forever. Yet when the gusts of loss interrupt our denial, our structure, we are faced with reality. Grief is exhausting, even when it co-exists with promise. My first husband and I had not been together for over twenty years when he died, yet I've been pummeled with memories of him. The way we'd savor breakfast dates, sitting in a Wisconsin diner, drinking cup after cup of coffee. Our bright yellow car that we drove way too long. Our rental house on the Oregon coast.
I have to sit down into this grief. Let it be okay to sit on the bench for as long as I need. Allow the fragility.
Recently, the girls and I collectively sat down into our grief and our memories, years of their childhoods vanished--both now beautiful, empowered women that are so strong and valiant it takes my breath away. Our time together reflected a day with blue sky like fresh paint, the Carolina heat diminished. We talked of their dad. And we spoke of our lives. Our plans. Our dreams. Still braving it this side of eternity. We laughed together so exuberantly, the table of women sitting close by turned our way and smiled, a longing on their faces to be with us.
Be alone with the sea for it is there you will find answers to questions you didn't realize existed.~Khang Kijarro Nouyen
I longed for something I couldn't name. I tried to read, but my mind raced. The words on the page blurred, and I read the same paragraph over and over. I couldn't go shopping to assuage my emptiness. I needed to stay out of stores. Save money. I wanted the ice cream in the fridge, but I knew I would feel horrible if I ate it. My yearning was not physical hunger.
Between my junior and senior year in college, I lived and worked in Hawaii for one summer taking classes. I didn't always make enough money to buy food every day. Many nights I bought a package of corn nuts at a convenience store on my way back to the dorms. I savored each salty, crunchy morsel, making the bag last for two hours. I worked for a local hair salon, handing out coupons on a busy street corner in Honolulu to tennis shoe-clad tourists. I got paid on Friday mornings according to how many persons presented to the owner's salon and used the coupon. I was broke most Thursday nights, but knew I'd have cash the next morning and could buy an Egg McMuffin. To distract me from the hunger pangs, I'd head to Waikiki Beach, wading in the ocean at sunset, picking up shells. The lapping waves and sky decked out with streamers of russet and orchid distracted me from my growling stomach. When I got back to my room, I'd place the shells on the window sill to dry, little scraps and snippets of beauty from the sea.
Perhaps I thirsted for beauty now. I opened a notebook I keep by my bed. I write eclectic lists, quotes and ideas in it. The notebook is messy and crammed with yellow legal pad sheets folded in rectangles. Here are some things I found, in no particular order. Like the shells, the words are lovely. Little bits of beauty that filled my longing for something I could not name.
This quote reflects perfectly how I feel about writing...
I had to write. I had no choice in the matter. It was not up to me to say I would stop, because I could not. It didn't matter how small or inadequate my talent. If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing.~Madeleine L'Engle (From A Circle of Quiet)
When I have to make presentations at work, I feel anxious, and before it's my turn to speak, I write exhortations on the yellow note paper...
You are a warrior woman, loved perfectly by God. You exhibit peace, joy, grace, kindness and mercy. Laughter defines you. Possibility thinking is your anchor. You look to the future with hope and expectation.
May my husband always think of me in this way...
She longed to know what at that moment was passing in his mind, in what manner he thought of her, and whether in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him.~Jane Austen (From Pride and Prejudice)
A term I could define earlier in my life, but when I ran across it again in an article, I'd forgotten what it meant. I had to look it up...
Confirmation bias: The process by which the mind seeks to confirm what it already believes. When in the throes of confirmation bias, we seek and interpret information that will allow us to continue to hold on to our beliefs, even when presented with contradictory evidence.
I am an infamous list maker...
There are lists to be made, of course. Always lists to be made, as if writing items in neat vertical rows might stave off randomness and chaos.~Wallace Stegner (From Crossing To Safety)
I relate to this...
I had felt my past unfurl inside me as if it had a mind of its own. These layers of ourselves are always there, waiting for the right moment to emerge...a jumble perhaps, but nothing is ever missing. Just hidden from view.~Dani Shapiro (From Devotion: A Memoir)
While conversing with my darling seven-year-old granddaughter...
When looking for a rainbow, look opposite the sun.~Lilly Peterson
Such gorgeous poetry in the Word...
For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.~Psalm 36:9 (NIV Translation)
A dream of mine...
If it weren't too late, I'd take a solo journey out west on a train.~Journal entry, 9-1-19
This resonates...
Refreshment is attached to every problem--destined to refresh, above weariness. We are designed to be full, not empty.~Graham Cooke
What do you long for?
If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care we find at some level there is always a doorway.~From The Ten Thousand Doors of Januray by Alex E. Harrow
I learned a new word this week: omnium-gatherum. The word is defined as a miscellaneous collection. Often I've felt my life could be described by such a phrase, yet more negative than positive--a mismatched plethora of scraps, faded photographs and dog-eared books. Mistakes and riddles unanswered, and a sprinkling of gold dust that sometimes reflected a life more shiny than it truly was.
Sometimes, maybe a lot, if I'm honest, I've identified or wanted to identify with other peoples' stories instead of my own. Individuals who are more physically attractive, richer, smarter. Better writers. Over the years I've strayed from my narrative. Discounted it. "Oh, anyone could have done that, or survived that." "I could have done more, most likely--I could have done a better job." "That accomplishment was merely a fluke. I probably could never do it again." My life downplayed. Minimized.
Then I saw the photo of the door. I could not let its symbolism drift away. How was this image speaking? And why?
I sensed the the door represented an invitation for me to step over the threshold and into my own life. The door seemed to beckon: "Don't stand on the edges and watch. Step in. Explore what's on the other side. Own your history, Priscilla. Declare that your life miscellany is a lavish collection of artifacts. Your stories are bound in leather with adventurous titles such as The Woman Who Dared to Publish (And Lived to Tell About It), or Resilience: The New Art Form of the 21st Century.
How grieved must God be when we do not fully embrace our unique identities. How could our stories be anything other than glorious when He resides in our lives? Every fountain of delight springs up from your life within me.~Psalm 87:7 (The Passion Translation)
What of you? Are you hovering on the threshold? Move courageously forward to embrace the beauty, the mystery of your narrative, your preferences, your gifting, your priceless, miscellaneous collection. Omnium-gatherum.