Consider The Ravens

The skies are clear this morning, baby-blue, with just a hint of amber sunlight feathered in around the edges as day breaks over the treetops.  On the way home from dropping Charlie off at school I caught myself getting lost in my own head, going over my mental list of urgent things that need my attention.  I rounded the last curve before I came close to my driveway and for some reason, looked up.  Three birds like tiny black specks were flying overhead in the chill of this autumn morning, probably in search of breakfast.  It dawned on me that birds worry about nothing really.  They know with every day and every season what their task is all about. It's surviving, living to see another Spring.  They don't care whether or not their nests are big and fancy, don't care if another bird has a better one than them.  They just live.

I suppose that could be said for all of nature, except of course for mankind.  It's really no one else's fault that we put our own lives under such scrutiny.  Instead of just enjoying what we have, we worry about what we're missing.  I wonder if sometimes, we examine life too closely.  We concern ourselves too much with what someone else might think of us; we have to dress just so, drive a car that says something about us, live in a house that is impressive to others.  And if by chance, we find ourselves among the less fortunate of society, we shame ourselves for not keeping up.  It seems like  a trap we humans set for ourselves so far back in time that no one knows when it all started.

The knot in my own stomach is becoming heavy and tiresome.  I am overwhelmed with all the "must dos" to the point of almost feeling paralyzed.  My time is never my own anymore, it belongs to work, or other people, or to the Social Security Administration.  It belongs to figuring out how to convince a hospital that they made a mistake, so I'm don't end up being penalized for their mistake.  It belongs to figuring out how to pay the bills and get a car that is driveable to wherever I need to go.

All I want to do is live.  Wouldn't it be grand if we could all just take flight in early morning sunrises, in search of food and adventure?  How awesome would it be if we could live like the birds do?

Life just isn't made as easy for us humans as it is for birds.  If we could fly, we wouldn't worry over cars.  I'm most pleased though, that my sustenance consists of more than worms and bugs or kind seeds and biscuit crumbs that little old ladies leave in the yard for me.  I suppose we make a fair trade with the fowls, in exchange for the inability to fly.  I know that worrying is often a choice I make.  I have rarely gone with an unmet need.

We humans, blessed with big ol' brains and hearts that hold a multitude of emotions are blessed in different ways.  For all the tending we must do, all the anxiety we carry with us, a deep well of  inner experience is ours for the living.  We take the joy and sorrow, the victory and defeat as we see fit.  We allow ourselves the freedom, not to fly above the clouds, but to draw from our own souls whatever feeling in which we want to indulge as life throws curveballs at us. Lately I've drawn up some heavy sorrow, deep grief, some frustration and anxiety; but I know that I can always send the bucket down again, draw up something more fulfilling.  I can sit with this bucket-full of dreary-ness today in perfect hope that in time, something better will bubble up.  A refinement of sorts, that can only be created from times of drought and despair will eventually spring up from my soul, giving me just what I need to keep facing another sunrise.

You know, I rarely reference scripture, but those three tiny birds I saw this morning made this portion pop into my head.  I share it with you here, in the spirit of our mutual humanity.  May your worries and mine be set aside, if only for today.

Luke 12:22-26

22 And He said unto His disciples, “Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.

23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap, they neither have storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much more are ye better than the fowls?

25 And which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

26 If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?

Early October

The rain usually begins to fall in early October.  It plasters bright yellow leaves to dark wet pavement, sticks Tthem to the sides of your car and gets them caught under the windshield wipers.  On breezy days the leaves tumble down like confetti; driving to work feels like a celebration.  We get a few days to enjoy the color of impending winter, a few days before it's time to rake the leaves and let the kids dive into them, when trees simply show off.  Early October heralds a transformation from warmth to coldness, from color to grey; but we embrace it with joy for the short reprieve it gives us.  A respite from the summer heat, and a pause before the chill of winter, it intrigues us somehow.

This year there has been no rain.  Early October has been dry, the colors dulled by a lack of summer storms.  They say the leaves will not make a big show of themselves this time, that we will wake up one morning and find they've blown to the ground in heaps of brown, leaving the blue-grey mountains in the distance looking naked and sad.  The trees in my yard will remain in their standing places, reaching their spindly branches upward, daring winter to do it's best.

A week ago I stood beside my father's bed.  I held his hand as best I could but he couldn't squeeze my hand in his like he used to when I was a girl.  I played a song for him, one we used to sing as a congregation in church, and I watched his face, calm and peaceful as he took it all in.  I turned my head to hide my tears from him; he cried so easily already, and it seemed unkind to let him witness my heart breaking because I knew this was the last time we would share these songs together.  We watched red birds out his window, fighting over deer corn and birdseed, saw a few birds that neither of us recognized.  He watched for deer dropping by. I watched for a sign.

Signs never come the way we expect them to.  I suppose if it happened that way we would say it was no big deal.  The sign I wanted wasn't outside that window, or in that room with my dad's heaving chest.  It never came in all the hours I sat beside him and wished he could stay a little longer--be himself again for just a little while.  I missed him so, already, since years before he took his last breath and his memory began to fade, transforming him into someone I hardly recognized.  Someone who often didn't recognize me anymore.

Two years ago in the tumbling dry leaves of early October I took the same drive through the country to my parents' place where I sat beside my Mama in the big red recliner she was so happy to have.  I held her hand in mine and smiled into her face.  I saw the Mama of my early childhood smiling back at me--the mama that nurtured me and treated me with tenderness.  She wanted to know if I was okay.  Even in her last hours, she was worrying about me.  I told her I was happy.  It was a lie, but at the time, it seemed only right to tell her what she wanted to hear.  Her sigh and smile, her relaxed hand in mine let me know that my words made peace in her heart, and I felt nothing but pure love for her in that beautiful moment.  I became a daughter without a mother, but I didn't know yet, what being motherless would come to mean.

Early October, my dad sat in his recliner looking forlorn.  This man sat pondering the great unraveling of a life carefully built through years of sweat and tears, through poverty and times of abundance.  The cords of life we so tightly twisted together, were finally fraying at the edges, threatening to unfurl and fall in a pile at our feet, everything unwound.  His eyes lost their focus for things in front of him.  When we talked, I saw a far off gaze in them; he was looking past this place and time and I couldn't reach him anymore.  He was there, I was here, and between us a great divide.

Mid October he cried a lot.  He told me the story over and over again, sometimes forgetting I was his girl.

October, a month of transformation, of celebration and yes, even warning that something more dreadful is to come, heralds for me now a reminder of how stuck we become in living here in cycles year after year, expecting all that is beautiful to be eternal.  But nothing lasts forever, does it?  Not even the love of a parent for a child, or a faithful husband for his wife.  Nothing living survives the first frost of Late October.  Houseplants get brought inside, gardens turn brown and even the grass turns sallow, yellow with winter's death.

It is two years now since I became a motherless daughter.  I was just beginning to learn how to feel about missing a parent from my life.  She died on a Sunday morning, October 11.

Last Monday night I drove in the dark to my father's bedside.  I kissed his head and spoke loving words in his ear.  He was barely breathing then, not responding at all though I hoped he heard me say "I love you".  I kissed his forehead once again, squeezed his big hand and left him there.  I knew I would not see him alive again.

It was a Tuesday morning, October 11, when he took his last breath and left us all--adults but orphaned.

Was this the sign I was looking for? Was this day and time,  when my creators took their departure from the cycle of seasons, the symbol of hope I needed?

Mid October, I sit on my couch and cry.  I'm trying to keep my eyes focused on the here and now but the here and now is not very encouraging.  I wonder if I'm meant to be here still.  Am I fighting a battle that should be left for God to decide in my stead?  Why do I keep connecting myself to a machine every night, racking up medical bills I can never pay, and for which I will pay by trapping myself in a cycle of poverty where my needs and those of my child are never fully met.  Is it worth all this--this life of "less than" that I have to live in order to survive?  Who am I helping more than I'm hurting here?

Late October's coming fast.  One windy night and the trees will be starkly bare, the ground scattered with the remains of summer that must be raked away and destroyed--forgotten.  I wonder if all we are and all we do in this life is merely in preparation for October; the beginning of an end, and the end of something we desperately wanted to hang onto.

This year we will dutifully play our roles.  We'll clear away the dregs of summer, pray for rain.  We will search for the bright side of all the transformation and try to find the lessons in our trials.

But my mom and dad, they already lived all their Octobers.  They lived the early weeks and transformative days and the stark, empty skeletons of trees as winter approached.  They lived them all until they couldn't anymore, and in the sunrises of Early October mornings, they closed their eyes to it all.  They left it to us--all the doing and changing and struggling.

And since early October has passed, and mid-October forces itself upon us, I am witnessing how real the struggle is.  I'm acknowledging that for me, it isn't over.  My early October morning hasn't come.

So I will carry on.

Garlic

I'm a clove of garlic.

Encased in a hardish shell, a thin layer of dried up peel on top, lumped together with a bunch of other cloves, smelling up the fridge, making the ice taste weird.

Maybe in a way we are all just cloves of garlic.  Some of us prefer to stay clustered up close together, wrapped tightly in that paper-like covering, hidden beneath layers of other cloves so we can blame the smell on someone else if we have to.

Not me.  I'm the clove that got broken off and set aside.  My nice cozy dried-up peel has been stripped away and there I lay, naked, waiting to be smashed or peeled open or chopped up or heaven forbid, pressed into some kind of sauce.

I know.  We are all supposed to be Salt and Light, adding flavor and illumination to the world around us, but most of us are just garlic.  We cling together as if our lives depend on it, terrified of spending time alone, anxious that somehow we're going to be exposed--that people will figure out we stink on the inside or that we are too weak to withstand the pressure of life.

I am the garlic that stands alone.  Not that I'm complaining.  You see, there are times, when you are at your garlicky worst, that you're doing yourself and the world around you a big favor by staying away from everyone.  Times when you just aren't good company.

This is one of those times for me.  I have not forgotten from whence I came, and I know how to find my way back to my people--my cluster, if you will.  However, this is one time that I feel like keeping to myself is best for me and for them.

Stress sometimes makes us unpleasant to be around, and grief and illness compound that unpleasantness.  I just wish I could get other people to understand this.  I am not lonely, I don't need to be cheered up.  I need to be alone with my thoughts and feelings.  I need some time to iron out all the annoying wrinkles that are making my life complicated.  Things like broken down cars, and issues with the DMV and insurance nightmares and medical decisions and paperwork that the government needs even though they already know the information they're asking me to provide for them.  I need time to stay the heck home and not spend money so I can pay my bills because I missed a week of work last week and a day of work this week.  I need time to learn how to feel about not having parents anymore.

The grief is bigger than me right now and I'm finding it paralyzing.  I'd rather sleep than problem-solve, but when I lie down to rest, sleep doesn't come.  Instead I am flooded with memories and thoughts of what it will be like for my kids when I die.  When I do dream, my dad shows up, doing regular things like fixing the boat and fiddling with fishing poles.  My mama is there sometimes, being the gregarious woman she sometimes could be--pointing out some knick knack she'd like to add to her collection.  My dad shows up to tell me he can't find his guitar, and asks me if I still play piano.  He's like he was 20 years ago--robust and red-faced, his memory intact.  He laughs and teases and I just want to reach out and squeeze him.  But they are just dreams and waking up from them is the absolute worst.

Then the morning sunlight dares to force its way past the curtain by my bed and remind me that it's time to start over again.  Another day to pretend that life is the same, business as usual.  That pile of papers on the kitchen counter that shame me because I still haven't dealt with them make me shake my head at my own inadequacy.  Then there's that blinking battery light in the car that taunts me--"You just thought you solved the car problem."  And my boy, worried about his grades, missing school because he's sick, his teacher likely thinking I'm the best candidate for worst mom of the year.

I feel like I'm in a garlic press.  All these little things putting more and more pressure on me, trying their best to squeeze me out and make me into something more than what I am.

As my father lived his life, I want to live mine; with the wisdom to know that on my own I am just a smelly old clove of garlic, but when I'm pressed and squeezed and chopped--when my tough exterior is stripped away, I can be something more.  He gave flavor to his world; instead of odor, he was an aroma, instead of clinging tightly to his place in the world, he allowed himself to be broken off and transformed.  I want to do that too, but right now, I think I need to be left alone for just a while, so I can marvel at my own stench and figure out who or what is worth being transformed for.

I wonder if my dad ever needed this, and then I know he did.  He had it, early mornings in the woods, sitting in the cold quiet of nature in a tree stand.  He had it on a lake all alone with just a fishing pole and the sound of water lapping the sides of the boat.  He took his time, and he still gave himself away.  So please understand that I am not shunning anyone.  I'm just trying to get my balance.

People keep saying, "If there's anything I can do...."  and I always just answer "Thank you" because really, what can anyone do?

Nobody likes the garlic when it's withered up or too strong; and I am just a clove of garlic.

If you will give me some time, I will spare you my stinkiness and everything will be okay again.  Eventually.

Deal With It

Of course by now everyone realizes that Donald Trump is a woman-hating troll of a man who is so proud of his sense of entitlement that he doesn't realize how evil it is to grope, kiss, or "grab" a woman without her consent.  Even Republicans, after this last episode, are distancing themselves from hm.  There's that pesky rape charge too, you know, the one where he's accused of raping a 13 year old girl, and for which there are several witnesses who have come forward to back up the girl's story.  It's apparently compelling enough, evidence wise, that a federal judge has decided the case needs to move forward against Trump.

All of this seems to have started a new conversation across social media.  Today on Twitter Kelly Oxford opened a dialogue about sexual assault by inviting women to share stories of their own "first time" being assaulted.  The stories are poignant, direct and chilling because they're real--because too many of us have similar stories.  Most of us can give example after example of times we were groped, kissed against our wills, held down, asked too-personal questions by perfect strangers, been ignored when we said no.

There are those who would have us believe that Trump's behavior in that recording that was just released is just par for the course.  They say all men engage in such banter, outside the earshot of women, of course.  I say that's not true.  In my lifetime, I've known far too many men who would be mortified to even hear another guy use such language about women.  They would be angered to hear a man speak so casually of sexual assault, would likely get defensive of the women they love if they heard someone speaking in such a way.  Funny thing is, all those men of whom I speak are likely Republican, conservative Christian men.  Yet, they seem to find a moral loophole that makes it okay for them to support someone like Trump.  Even some women are finding ways around this issue so they can stay true to their party.  Party loyalty these days, seems to be synonymous with the betrayal of our own best interests.

We send a message every time a very public case of sexual assault hits the headlines and we excuse it away or blame the victim for it, we manage to silence girls in elementary school who are groped by high school students or teachers or dad's friends.  We silence the teenage girl who is forced into performing sexual acts on her coach, her youth leader, or her boyfriend.  We silence girls who are molested by step-dads and uncles and older siblings.  We tell them that it won't matter if they do speak up, no one will believe them.  We tell them that "men just do that stuff" and we as women "just have to deal with it."  Sexual assault, degradation, harassment have all become so commonplace for women that we consider it just another fact of life.  We do a poor job of teaching our daughters to guard their bodies, to protect themselves by being prepared to speak up when someone crosses a line with them because we are complacent.  We are complacent because in a way, I believe we feel defeated.

How many times do you get your breasts squeezed, or your ass rubbed, or have some guy try to put his hand up your skirt before you just resign yourself to the idea that this is how life is?

A few years back a guy friend of mine called me up on a Saturday night and asked if I wanted to go get some dinner.  I was bored, at home with no kids, so I said, sure, sounds fun.  I offered to meet him at the restaurant but he said  no, he'd pick me up. We went out and had a nice dinner, good conversation, he insisted on picking up the check.  Now mind you we never had any kind of romantic interaction before this.  We were friends, and my understanding was that we were a couple of friends going out to dinner.  That's it.  When he dropped me off, he insisted on walking me to the door, despite my saying it really wasn't necessary.  By the time I had the door unlocked and stepped inside to put my keys down, he was in my house, closing the door behind him.  I did not invite him in.  My dog was going wild, still a puppy and needed to go out.  I grabbed her leash and headed for the back door.  He followed me, stood over me while I walked her, and then followed me back inside the house.  I put down the leash, patted my dog and stood up.  He was right in front of me, grabbed me and started forcefully kissing me-shoving his tongue in my mouth.  I couldn't get away from him.  When he finally let go, I told him he needed to go.  I wasn't forceful enough, I was actually worried about hurting his feelings!  I told him I had to work the next day and couldn't stay up late.  I repeated that phrase a dozen times and fended off forceful kisses and hands groping me for the next 20 minutes until I finally convinced him to leave.  To this day he does not understand why I will not speak to him or show up at any function where he's likely to be in attendance.  He honestly saw NOTHING wrong with his behavior.

I've been groped at work, by clients and by coworkers.  On my first day of school a sixth grade boy ran his hand up my inner leg, underneath my skirt and other boys laughed about it.  In seventh grade a guy who was supposedly gay grabbed my crotch at the afternoon bus line and hollered to draw attention to what he was doing.  In high school my youth director from church would take me home last after church parties, and start sexually inappropriate conversations with me on the bus ride to my house.  He would make comments about how well I was "developing" and ask me if I had a boyfriend, and if I had kissed him, among other things.  When I was twelve a family member fondled me on a walk home from the store.  I've been cat-called, verbally demeaned (boys in middle school called me dildo lips because I had full lips.  I didn't even know what a dildo was) and forced to have sex against my will within a romantic relationship.  The sad thing?  Too many women in this world have stories just like mine, stories far worse than mine, and they are normalized.

We are made to believe that because men are men, we should expect and learn to live with these behaviors from them.  We shouldn't complain or press charges or even tell our parents when we are assaulted because, men just do that stuff.

My question for those people who are so quickly finding moral loopholes for Trump's behavior is this:  Would you be okay with what he said if he were saying it about your daughter? Your wife? Your mom?  Your sister?

Because there are a million other men just like him out there, and they likely are saying those things about the women and girls you love.  Worse yet, they are the ones groping them, fondling them, degrading them and raping them.  If you okay this behavior for one of them, you condone it for all of them.  Is that the guy you want to be?  Is that who you are?

And to those women who are buying into the idea that this "common" behavior is excusable in "certain instances" ask yourselves, if it were you in any of the above mentioned situations, which one would you find excusable?

There is nothing normal or acceptable in the entitled attitude that allows a man to believe he can behave any way he wants with women.  There is no moral loophole that excuses a man for "grabbing her by the pussy" or even kissing a woman against her will just because he thinks she's beautiful.  If you can find a way to make this okay in your mind, you need professional help.  I know that sounds snarky, but it is not meant to be.  If you are a woman, excusing this kind of behavior means you have a serious deficit in self-esteem.  If you are a man who defends this behavior, you are likely an abusive, narcissistic person. In either case, you need intervention; and as a country, we need to intervene and stand up for women and girls everywhere who are too often on the receiving end of sexual assault in all its various forms.

Heavy Like A Cloud

We woke up to sunny skies this morning.  The Autumn sunrise hung deep on the horizon as I drove my boy to school and I, too short to be helped by the visor, squinted my way around corners and curves, nearly cursing the light but stopping just short of it because something inside me honors it far too reverently to fling expletives carelessly at it.  Even in its harshest glare we treasure it, for darkness cannot exist where it is near and in its illumination, all of life somehow takes on a lightness that defies gravity itself.  It is the lightness of a new day, with the renewed hope and grace--of morning,  that takes the heaviness out of our step.  The same big, clumsy, burdened feet that just last night carried us to our bed of slumber, in the brightness of morning somehow bear the weight of merely our own souls by the time we trudge our way from the bedroom to the front door.  There is nothing lighter than a soul, although we sometimes swear the loads we carry inside us are like anvils, tied to our backs; or better yet, like a  dark ominous thunder cloud, deep inside of us, full to the point of wringing itself out, threatening to drench us with its oppressive  torrential downpour.

I have spent the last few days at the bedside of my father.  He who was the second to greet me into this world, who was there for all the most memorable days of my life, who graced me with his unconditional love and acceptance has lain in peacefully resting while we, the family he created, lingered close by.  We took turns about him, holding his hand, speaking our own peace to him, our lips to his ear, waiting anxiously for his labored responses, for even in his last breaths we want him to remind us of his love for us.  

My dad has lived an amazing life.  He spent many a long hot day bobbing around the lake on his boat, the hot summer sun scorching his ears and neck, making his nose peel from the burn.  In his old age, he suffered the effects of it.  His ears are now deformed from so many surgeries to remove skin cancers.  Part of the nose I used to know is no longer there, and the lips that kissed my infant forehead have also lost substance to the relentless scorching of the sun.  Still, I look at him and see my father, weathered and worn, he remains the defining figure in the epoch of my childhood.  Outwardly so much has changed about both he and I; our bodies in their own ways, have already lost some battles.  But even in these final days when I sit by his side, I long to lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat, just as when I was a small girl marveling at the greatness that lived inside him.  I long to hear that voice coming from deep in his belly, to feel the comfort of his arms around me--to have his assurance, just one more time, that everything in the whole world will be okay.  

Troubles multiply, just like droplets inside a cloud.  They all cluster together inside my mind and overwhelm my thoughts with "what if" and "maybe".  I find myself trying to predict what will happen next so I can be prepared, but life isn't like a weather report, and there are some things for which umbrellas are not made.  You can never expect the grief that falls upon you when you look the very source of your own being in the eye and know that soon, he will be removed from the place he's always occupied in your life.  

Cars break down and children struggle with school work.  Babies are busy forming fingers and toes and little noses, while mommies work too hard and daddies lose track of priorities.  Some kid a few towns over figures life isn't worth the trouble--at least, other people's live aren't, and decides to end them before anyone else gets a say in his plan.  A father lingers close to death, while a Mommy and Daddy follow a tiny casket down the aisle of a church; their little hero ripped from their lives far too soon.  A hurricane teases at the coastline chasing people from their homes, its darkness consuming the day around it.  People stand to lose all they own in this world.  None of it seems fair.

This evening as I was driving home from visiting my father there was a noticeable lack of sunlight. The sun should have been there, hanging low and Westerly, just above the hills peeking through the treetops.  Instead, a singularly dark cloud hung heavy over its light.  It spared me from my squinting and swearing, but it reminded me too, that trouble often awaits over the next hilltop.  Its heaviness made my feet drag as I made my way inside the house.  

I came inside, found my way to this spot on my couch that always welcomes me home, and sank into it with all the weight of grief and uncertainty resting deep in my own belly.  My head, heavy from all the thinking, looked for a soft place to land.  

And then, before my hand could reach for the remote, a tiny sliver of sunlight shot its beam from low in the sky, right through a tiny void where the curtain should meet the wall.  With it shining thus, I could see the color of my own lashes, mascara long washed away from the tears of that cloud inside my head.  Red lashes, just like my dad's.  

I sat without moving, letting the sun slide lower through the crack until finally, it was gone.  Nothing but the orange glow of sunset remains now, giving ambience to my living room.  We all sometimes need a comforting place to land, where the light can find us and where it can linger just long enough to make our hearts glow with hope again.

Even though the darkest cloud you've ever seen might be hanging heavy over your head; I hope you too can find your safe, comfortable place.  I pray the light will reach you, remind you that even what you have lost will never completely be gone as long as you are here to carry on.  Every life that we have cherished perseveres, in the blink of eyelashes or in the lilt of a laugh, that soul you loved lives on in you.  Let that eternal flame of love and remembrance become the light that lifts the darkness from your soul.  Let it make your feet lighter.  Let it glow through you like the sinking evening sunset through a West-facing window.  

Heavy clouds will come and go.  The Light will always remain.