I would like to write again

I would like to write again. About haunting mistakes and about my children, who say beautiful things.

I would like to write of wild gratitudes that make me both good and unbearable. I would like you to know that I'm doing my best not to judge you. I would like to write again, to remind myself of all the calm, the turmoil, and all the pain that I can't feel because it isn't mine. I would like to write in hopes that you aren't judging me. I would like to wrestle and then write of with how unfair everything is and, that out of that unfairness, you can still make a pretty good life.

I want to write again as a way to apologize for what I've said before. For all of the missteps and mistakes. And for all the protecting that looked and walked like pain and learning. That won't change much I suspect- I will write embarrassing things.

I want to reconcile with art. I want to try something, even if it's nothing. I want to remember, every day, that art matters. Art is what we are trying to get at. Maybe that is why all of these wars and inequalities make me feel so lost, spoiled and ashamed. Maybe that's also why I feel proud because it isn't fair that I want to write this and others don't.

I would like to write again, about swellings that are untreatable. About the pressure surrounding trusty limbs, about the process of learning to stand again, and about the process of unlearning. To write about rage, to write about things we don't talk about as much as we should.

I want to write about God and not about god. To write about golden calves. And I want so much to write about how saying "no" is one way of saying "yes" and how saying, "I'm right" means "I don't know" and how learning to say "I don't know" means "I'm okay". To record how hard it can be to be yourself when you've wanted so much to be someone else or something else. And I want to write about how healing that seeping wound can just make everything good.

ancestors and the honor of fathers and mothers
examinations of the heart
human rights and ethical living
books as tools to teaching children about the outside world
books to swell the heart
feminism
gratitude
questions and critical thinking for young children
toys and tools for children
cooking with kids
purchases that last for the home
plants
winter survival guide
nostalgia

Today I returned from a week long break from February heartaches. The ocean and the sun, time spent quietly. Sleeping early, waking early. I took the kids and met my sister and her family in San Luis Obispo. It's funny how a change of location can bring exactly what is needed. Multiple times I burst into tears and how needed the very streets, the very scenes of that place were. Like God finding me. The phrase came over and over that God must have had me in mind in the moulding of those green hills dramatically dropping into the blue ocean.

We drove the whole way in warmth but met a surprise snow just outside of the Tehachapi wind farms. We were routed off the 5 for the night. The kids were filled with excitement to awake to snow in a place I told them there wouldn't be any. In the morning we chose to go south to Fillmore and then north on the 101 through Ventura. That place holds parts of me that I had long forgotten. When we arrived we filled each day with nothing. Beach nothing, sun nothing, good sushi at Umi in Grover and Farmer's market. Trees and sun up breakfasts. The whole thing was an answer to some soul-searching needs.  

We've got to start at the bottom of something. The place where our settling sounds like a bell toll is as good a place as any. Where our habits defy us into corners dark. Well intentions that none of us could carry anymore. This winter light brings wishes back to itself giving a respect for our hopeful, deep-lying selves.

Here is the place where the seeping out gets old. I see it for what it is but it seeps and sings and summons something I'm trying to get away from. Persisting with teeth of hell, back to itself. LOOK AT ME! And so I look long reassured that communications with reflections are no way to spend myself and so I forget. And on and on and on and so the command goes, and so the sin. Forgetting becomes a triumph of carrying on as it becomes the Achilles heel. And it's just me being me and me being good and on and on and on.

Broken, band-aiding fractures with good remedies. She remained unaware that the buoyancy of these breaks only repelled remedies. Salves don't multiply or last so she lasted there without a balm, cliff teetering, until the bottom broke out.

Tired of teetering she walked out on the self, of herself. She initiated a descent with her insistence of being on solid ground. Fleeting and falling into something other than self, other than other. She didn't see the shattering. Her convincing was too sure. Her persuasions too holistic but she couldn't seem to put herself back together and so she didn't. Brushing off and insisting upon peddling and paddling and moving forward she gave them what they wanted, said what they wanted to hear.

You've seen them. The injured who insist it was a bump and they'll just resume? A thorough disorientation mistaking up for down, and joy for immense sorrow and then that sorrow is mistaken for a foundation and it just wasn't true. There was nothing there on that shelf, nothing in that convincing but the work of convincing.
 
And when the bottom broke a scrambling began, instinctively wishing for fragments of foundations or pieces of goodness, swearing they were there. She swears they were there. Too many memories of it- right there, where you were sure there was something. Still. Something to slip a toe onto? Something to teeter on? Something solid to aid a throwing of diminished weight up and over into the safety that never was.

At last, it all ended with a hard, fast, and far fall that let out the hideous fluids. The murk that released soaked up the falling place and when the soaking was complete I got up and walked out with myself, walking into myself. 
 

December 1st

Tonight, with my apartment home filled with pine and lights I feel proud and content.

As I gathered the kids next to me to open our first day of advent surprise I read a few verses from Luke 2. My littles listened. I told them what a manger was. I told them it was a dirty bowl that animals ate from. I explained the nudity of Jesus, comforted with nothing but swaddling, which I used their swaddling blankets to explain.

I told them why we celebrate Jesus. That He was the best human who ever lived! He came to make change possible. I asked them if they ever do bad things. If they ever make bad choices and I assured them that I do. That daddy does and that everyone we love or ever loved makes mistakes and they want and need to change. Jesus makes that possible! Dotter reminded me that Christ also, "has a body again!" making the permanence of death quieted. As I told them I hoped for it to be true and there, in the artificial glow of plugged in strands I remembered that this is just a twinkle of truth and it feels good.

Lamps

Snow!

Heirloomed Books

The Road- Cormac McCarthy

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything is Illuminated- Jonathan Safran Foer

The Secret Life of Bees- Sue Monk Kid

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly- Jean Dominique Bauby

The Prophet- Kalil Gibran

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- Dave Eggers

My Name is Asher Lev- Chaim Potak

The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway

To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter- Carson McCullers

Peace Like a River- Leif Enger

So Young Brave and Handsome- Leif Enger

Crossing to Safety- Leif Enger

Animal Vegetable Miracle- Barbara Kingsolver

The History of Love- Nicole Krauss

Rain of Gold - Victor Villasenor

Siddhartha- Herman Hesse

What are some of your favorite books? Books that you could read over and over.

I could read the books on the list above over and over. I'm currently reading Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and I'm loving it.

Definition: Heirloom Friend

- those who punctuate themselves above the common grammar of kind and worn-out greetings. 
- shaker marker makers.
- hand holders, mirrored images, listening listeners.
- sister, brother, Godsends.

Legacy

Heirlooming is the act of setting our soul in something, expecting it to come back bettered by the thing we set it in. In family, in relationships, design, music, films, friendly greetings, writing, travel, folded quilts, photographs. The fact is that our genealogical legacy teaches us that there are unintended consequences in everything we do. In whatever ways this manifests itself it is true- the reach is one thing that we have no control over. The only thing we are assured of in this life is the direction of our reach.

My Grandmother Ardell Marie Dean Zimmerman Adamson died last year. My grandmother wasn't my welcome mat grandma. She was not merely my maternal spoiler or advisor. She was my cheerleading chastising parent who loved me with a love so tangible, that even in the recounting of it I feel oriented and eternal. Eternal. Anyone who loves you that deeply leaves marks that make you. While discussing Grandma's death with my cousin Andrea last week, I realized that Grandma taught me to love everything I love. Food, health, hard work, friendship, visiting, music, art, travel, Jesus, stories. I am who I am because of her powerful push and embrace. I am, in all sincerity, hers. She used to joke that I ought to give her a birthday gift on my birthday for, without her, I would be nothing. She was right. 

Her death was expected and it came after a long deterioration. By all measures I am glad for her release. Her release. I am not glad, however for my own. There is something hollow here because she's gone on. Her death, and the absence that preceded it, hold feelings that I continue to come back to. These feelings are a mine filled with truths that orient me within her legacy. I am reminded of her reach, her doings, her directions and the consequences of her life. 

As I have mentioned before, I see regret as I see doubt. I don't feel it necessary to run away from the uncomfortable. I feel strong and sure about this now, but my confidence is a pendulum epiphany resulting from living in the opposite. Anxious to please and solve, fix and tidy, I often answered my dilemmas with idioms while remaining unsolved and uncomfortable inside. I do not relish in discomfort, but I have come to see emotional discomfort as a way to achieve greater emotional strength. This is true physically and is certainly true spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, etc. Regret is a deep seated stinging power that arrests us until we change course setting our souls in something different. Regret is a tool that holds us until we move in some forward freedom direction and being the obstruction that it is, once it lifts its purpose is revealed. 

I have regrets about my grandma's final years. I regret that despite my one-car-poor-husband-in-school-two-young-babies excuses I didn't go to her more. She wanted me there with her. To hold her hand and talk of her cat Raja, to rub her feet and flatter her. I regret that her decline caused me a discomfort and that I kept myself from feeling the relief that came in her company. I regret that my terror of loosing her reserved me in a way that I didn't think possible. But that's just it. I didn't understand the principal of sitting in discomfort. I only understood fighting it and getting a good trajectory. I couldn't conceal myself. I was struggling with sitting in it alone and sitting in it with the woman who gave you life didn't seem all that attractive. I feel ashamed of what I missed by not knowing these things, but what I've learned here extends her reach and makes things that are hollow closer to whole.

From February

She stopped subscribing to the past by demanding a cessation of all back-thinking. A change of direction, after all, was as simple as suggestion taking. For all the outlookings and future considerations had to take a break. The faith and hope needed a sabbatical from forcing her on. Truth and tradition entangled themselves so entirely that she couldn't separate the dream from the dreamer.

So there she sat with the task of separating her agreements, mmotivated because the attempt was something life depended on. She couldn't go on without exerting both will and want. The jumbled condition spread a haze of drunkenness over the day-to-day, dulling her will along with her direction. She had to separate it all before she could put it back. She would remove the threads, ever so carefully. Threads that were discolored and disingenuous. Threads that spoke near talk and yet lived far away. The thread of the ingrained. The culture thread, the shoulds and should nots, the past strings, the sick feeling, the sad feeling, the fear of being misunderstood, the fear of not fitting in, the fear of being tethered to the convincing, the science threads, the God reliance, the soul mated thread, the rejection thread and the abuse threads. 


These dissections were momentous monotones attempted in hopes that a naked canvas would give her a second start. This separating act, was just like anything else. Once you sat down to do it, no matter how beautiful the "it" was it was still just an it. A mortal "it" accompanied by work. She felt postured and poised in the labor as she landed herself in the first familiar place of intended triumph- the bottom. A mountain at her feet. 

She repositioned as she moved under the great weight of finding occurrences. The occurrences sounded like crashes as they separated. The lulls between sets of waves increased a little, giving her thin gasping gulps of fine air. Real air. Freezing and desperate- hopeless and vulnerable for the first time. And the colder and more quiet, the more clear and empty it all bleached out to be, the more her lungs could expand. The more she could exercise a will that she took on but didn't gather.  

As all of the essentials lay still she saw them for what they were. 

and its motion

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.” - Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

I am resilient. I bounce. My answers to heartache and hardship have almost always been the "right ones". Move on, improve, don't look back, onward, upward. 

Some of the impact from painful and pressuring times has been blunted by this resilience. It served me well on my mission when people rejected the messages of what was so important to me. It served as a protectant as I experienced life with an alcoholic mother. It has helped me modify and restructure my business as I find things that work and don't. Sometimes this "good" mechanism, this personal positive has had an unintended, undiagnosed disease effect.

The very act of a bounce changes an objects direction from the thing from which it bounced. You can talk and talk about the past, the hard thing, the experience from that caused the bouncing but though your lips draw you close to it, your heart and your soul have bounced on, and are far from it. There is a certain disconnect making it hard to revisit and recover from life's harsh blows. 

The last few years have opened up opportunity for reflection, time that as a young twenty-something I simply did not have the desire for. I can see the follies of my youth with such staggering, embarrassing, and painful clarity now. The lack of faith, the loneliness, the running. I see my mistakes and at times, unlike the confident, I regret huge portions of my life. Mostly because in my aforementioned bouncing I bounced uncontrollably without recovering from the thing that sent me in motion. 

I have been revisiting and returning to my hardships through deep conversation with dear friends, intensive weekly therapy and consistent thought about my life. It has been the most therapeutic and transformative 9 months of my life. I have, through the process figured out who I am. Yes, I'm 30. Yes, I'm a late bloomer in the personal identity department. Yes, I have an incredibly long way to go.  The process of therapy is therapeutic. Therapeutic in that it uncovers symptoms and seeks, not only to heal them, but to understand their origins. 

As I taught on my mission, man's first orienting move toward enlightenment and salvation is understanding the nature of God and his relationship to his maker. I can list the history and characteristics of divinity, the trinity, Father and Son but I do not understand my relationship to them. And so one of my biggest challenges is with God. Who is He? What are His intentions for me? Is He truly a caring parent or a non-intervening observer? Is there such a thing as destiny or a personal plan for each of us? Does God care about our lost keys while children suffer? Does he forgive? How do mercy and justice play out?  Is God calling me to come closer, to knock, to ask? 

Each time I have asked these questions I have been answered the same, "...your heart is far from me." 

It's sad. It's sad to write that and to feel it. Its lonely and disoriented. Doubt needs to be visited. Doubt is the great catalyst for everything great from scientific discovery to personal triumph. I, like so many others, find that doubt isn't something that is warmly embraced in our culture. Our first Sunday ritual is saturated to the point of deafness with the phrase, "I know". I understand that feeling. I've said and I've felt it. I've felt that burning fiber conviction and I loved its warmth but it but the truth is "I don't know"feels more powerful to me now. It is more needy and needing and for now, I am needy and needing.  In fact, as a Christian I intend to need and not know for the rest of my life, so I'm choosing to embrace it. 

Instead of fearing my feeble knees and far-away heart and answering it with niceties I am ready to get down with it, get on with it. I need to orient my heart instead of comforting it with traditions and rites that have, for me, become motions. I want to return to the rites with neediness. I want my heart to be filled and close, not tied up with traditions that I can't see the service of. These words all scratch the surface. These words will one day act as an emotional reminder of where I was. I intend to move beyond this and through it to something assured and at rest. I don't intend for my questions to be answered- not all of them. I just want to feel. I am not interested in "knowing" so much as "hoping". 

I have been seeking peace and last night I felt it as I rounded the point of the mountain driving along i-15. I sing while I drive and as I belted out"O Come O Come Emmanuel" something caught my eye to the east. Pronounced and arresting there among Traverse twinklings was the lesser light night-ruler. 

When I saw it I audibly remarked at its majesty, "Oh wow!" And then, I burst into tears. The flood gates were open as "...who ransomed captive Israel" blared out I sang and cried and sang and cried. I apologized to the Creator for what I'm not and I thanked Him for the second chances to be what I am. I felt a reverent awe for the condescension of the Christ child as I felt the hand of God reach down and remind me that He is there. 

I am still unsure of what this means but I am certain that planets moving in their regular form are, as divine witnesses, speaking something to me. Something of our cause for disorientation, something of comfort and mercy and a majesty that, in that moment, was for me. 

Christmas Music

I could listen to these songs everyday. I'm not a huge fan of Christmas music that doesn't include Christ's birth and these are the best of the best. Most of the tracks are by Sufjan Stevens which shouldn't be a surprise.
Click HERE

Hearts

 

Three years ago I stretched out and staggered through my first experience bringing life into this world. I approached the process with an embarrassing amount of conviction for how raising a child, loving a person, pushing, laboring and delivering was supposed to be done.


Dotter arrived 10 days overdue. Days that dismayed me. My pregnancy was easy and there was nothing uncomfortable about her late arrival. While I was anxious to move to the next stages of nourishing and caring for her, I was not bursting or bitter. I ate, spent time with friends and settled into a new daily freedom that only an unemployed expecting mother can understand. I gave into nesting by painting and priming and requesting lists from trusted mother friends on needed supplies.


Once she arrived I made lists (and still do) of her firsts and other punctuated happenings. Words, sentences, steps, dates with Daddy. But with Dotter those firsts have slowed. She does almost everything by herself and is always excited and willing to learn. Something about this innocence and delight she takes in being alive took me in today. She was jumping on our bed in aqua and fuchsia and I was taking her photograph when she suddenly stopped and moved her hand to her chest, "Mommy, can you hear that? Its my heart beating." Her heart. That is what is growing.


She comforts her friends, strangers and family who are hurt. She can differentiate strangers from family, family from friends, pretty and clean from pretty and disheveled. She has manners and knows how to hold a baby all by herself. She lights up every place she goes. She is persistent and independent and quick. She needs her own time and loves to read. She gets confused and mixed up (as we all do) tangling what she needs and wants and what she feels and senses.


My milestone is that I realize how little and how very very much I know about life, about what is right, about how to love someone. Much more than before she was mine. It is a daunting daring task this mothering thing. A task that is growing my heart with hers.

As many of you know, my husband Cade is an engineer and part owner of Black Pyramid Recording. This Christmas they recorded a great Christmas compilation for Deer Child that is now available FREE! Click HERE to download and listen.

My favorite tracks-
"The First Noel" featuring Lauren Smith, my cousin. What a voice Lauren!
"All I Want for Christmas" featuring Katrina Ricks who was featured on my photo blog yesterday for the Say Yes to Hoboken Sister Style photos.

Still, Still, Still

third generation interest

 

 A few weeks ago I used about 10 cubes of butter as I prepared a gratin, pies, mashed potatoes and dips as I prepared my first Thanksgiving meal. As I peeled the waxed paper from perfect rectangular pats of fat, my mother-in-law reminded me that her mother used to fold the greasy wax papers saving them for future greasing. So I'm doing that now, it just makes sense.


Meat is just meat now. Marketing terms and tactics have so brilliantly washed slaughter, corpse and carcass from the public mind that the mere idea of our dinner having had a face, or having experienced death as a means to provide us with sustenance, is generally repulsive and revolting. This sterility is intentional and is generational.


Every country I have ever visited displayed a very different version of plating and presenting. The opposite, in fact, from the whitewashed presentation of foodstuffs I was accustom to. As I visited an Asian foods market in Russia I remember questioning the validity and sterility of the foodstuffs- specifically the spices, nuts and flours because they sat in the open air in large jugs and vats. I was accustom to plastics and texts wrapping my food in an originless security blanket of clean, appropriate, regulated.


This delightful place was filled with tradition and history. Colorful spices, textured cheeses and whole dried fish and flesh hung above brilliantly dressed Russian girls who stood dead pan while customers filed in and out hunting and gathering. There, the process is still very much a part of the pallet. The grower, the shape, the weight and texture all play into the culinary decisions of much of the undeveloped and developed worlds. There is a certain transparency that most modern Americans grow a bit suspicious of- we like wrappings and presentation.


Last year Erin and I participated in the full slaughter of a 2 year old turkey. I loved the experience. It seemed right. It was clean and respectful and I never once felt emotions of disgust or the repulsions of gore. I wrote about it as a passion-filled nouveau vegetarian but, after nothing short of 30 or so edits I let it sit in the drafts folder where it has been collecting dust ever since. Rather than experience catharsis through my writings I found solitude in Safran-Foer's "Eating Animals" and realized that the problem of being conscious of what you eat is a weighty one.


Tonight I watched the video below which reminded me. It reminded me of how far we have gotten away from the common, the necessary, the prices we pay to acquire what we want.

The Perennial Plate Episode 82: In the name of Queens from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

The warning of graphic content is rarely attached to things of true graphic nature like stories on the five o'clock news of child abuse, our troops being slaughtered, women being constantly and consistently sexualized and objectified.  Isn't that one of the follies and uglinesses of the modern world? Forgetting? Isn't it one of the most repetitive and punctuated goals of most spiritual works? And yet we embrace forgetting and pass it off as progress. 

We lose something when we forget don't we? We lose something when something else distracts, detracts or diminishes our value of the forgotten. We lose fat on waxed papers giving way to Pam sprays and other such nonsense. We lose color and relationships and we most certainly lose value and appreciation.  We sacrifice spiritual strength and financial fortitude for instant gratifications.


I am not suggesting that progress is harmful or valueless. I am merely suggesting that we not be so excited and anxious for the next best thing. As Dotter opened her pile of three year old gifts today she barely had the wrapping torn when she was looking for the next "heavy heavy hang over" reward. I took her aside and tried to remind her of the delight in the now, in the one gift. God help me teach my children to see something in the now.


Here's the thing about the past. It used to have life there. The breast and drumsticks used to be legs and chests. The uniform box-shaped, genetically-modified tomatoes used to be filled with ridges and rivets that we laughed at and delighted in their season. We saw God and the miracles of natural science in the creation and we appreciated it.


The modern American business is expert at finding "problems" in our work and creating solutions to those problems. We call these opportunists offerings brilliant and we line up out the door in hopes to trade in work for ease. Experts define and convince us of our "problems" and laugh all the way to the bank. Remember the Sneeches don't we?


Take for example Bisquick who, bless their hearts, did not solve the 1930's housewife's dilemma over creating buttery bisquits and pancakes- they created a substitute. A tasteless, bland substitute that most of us are happy to accept. But, pardon me, at what cost? As with anything taking the work from food also removes the reward. For isn't it true that when we know the work (and do that work) that goes into something we become more, and not less appreciative? As we test and try, fix and finagle we enrich our reward and inject value into our experiences? For me- yes.


And so, I am interested. I am interested in what my grandparents were used to. I am interested in the old ways, the old world, the forgotten solved problems. For time has told me that some of the greatest satisfactions of life are unlocked by revisiting discarded processes and practices.


*Many thanks to Robby O Brien who helped me remember that loose is not the way to spell lose. And thank you to the rest of you who turned a blind eye. And thank you to me for writing at 1 am.

lift where you stand

 This week a phrase has been running end to end across my mind, "lift where you stand". Last month in therapy, as I emptied my tired and over-taxed heart, a problem revealed itself. A problem of priority. I was given an assignment that I approached half-heartedly (as it seemed both obvious and elementary) but, trusting the intention, I followed the prescription.

I drew on a large sketch page with a sharpie. First a jug- my life. Then large rocks- my must-have/do things first, followed by the more moderately important stones and then finally the gap-filling watery niceties/obligations of my life. I named names. I saw my life with a clarity that the difficulties and busyness of the last several years, especially the last 9 months, made impossible.

I sorted and saw.

My life has been charmed. Miraculously, and perhaps divinely, it provides me with enough (and often more than enough) of what I have needed to get by. There are lean times and fat times but my needs, and the possibility of my needs, are always met- even if I don't see it. Which I hadn't. This may be seen as a matter of ingratitude but more precisely it is an issue of spinning wheels and back-breaking reaches.

The world encourages overextension. I feel the pressure of it. To take my business to the next level, to befriend another person, to offer another hand, to invest here, save there, spend there, jump on this chance. We are a marketing rich generation and that mentality leaks through into everything. These leaks remind me of the great everything while excusing the tangible now. Every diversion and day is colored with a shameless promotion of possibility. Neon flashing ridiculousness of limited time offers followed by more once in a lifetime discounts.

Reality, as it always does, catches up with the glamor of getting what we want. The sheen of new things wears out and is always replaced by a lusty new appeal or promise. While shimmers vanish, the reality and responsibility of where we stand is persistent. Reality is deep and wide but most of all, it is satisfying.

I stand in a place where two tiny mouths, hearts, minds and spirits need me. They require my hands to clean and nourish, rest and work them. Lifting here means holding and creating and being privileged to introduce them to the "weightier matters" (see Matthew 23:23)  of this place.

I stand in a place of marriage. Where two broken people are tethering themselves to truth in order to get bigger and better. Lifting here means commitment and repentance, forgiveness and openness. It means patience and pleasure in each other's company.

I stand with my camera and my words. I only have my own. I have this lighting, this perspective, these experiences. Lifting here means slowing down. It means photographing and writing about what I see, what I want to see, what matters to me. It means being my own audience and my own performer and welcoming guests as just that.

I stand as a sister and daughter and friend. I see hurts, needs, wants and possibility. I lift by giving what I can. I lift by feeling the weight of yes and no and then living for that commitment. I lift by being present where and when I can. I lift by being flawed and forward and by being me.

I heirloom a life filled with importance and intention when I lift where I stand.

This table makes me happy. I am, as previously mentioned, in love with it. It has already held hot plates of food made with care and intention. Hosted conversations and spills.

This view makes me happy. It is the view across my house. It takes in the atmosphere and lighting of my home perfectly.

I love the color, the lighting, the boy mostly though.