a certain kind of brave

It's like that, when you're describing the unacceptable occurrences.  Things that don't happen to you.  Things that happen to the people that you know through other people.  The terrible swimming accidents.  The children taken from the back seat of their car.  The mothers who wander off the road and are never heard from again.  You hear the story and you think of the survivors, and you find yourself murmuring, "I don't know how they do it.  I don't know how they carry on.  I'm not that kind of brave."

This should be a letter to two women whom I love.  Two women who don't know each other, but have graced my life with their humor and strength and wisdom.  Both of them mothers, struggling with things that surpass my comprehension.  They are the certain kind of brave that defies my ability.  So much so that I have stilled myself into silence, thinking--- I am not that kind of brave, not that kind of warrior who can look grief and pain and the yawning void of loss in the face and still make pancakes in the morning.

If it was me, I'd not be making pancakes for a year.  Or several. 

But these dear women, they know that there are little ones counting on their consistency.  Looking forward to the pancakes even if the batter is salted with tears.

When I don't know what to do, I think of a certain kind of brave and hope for a kernel of it in myself, something that will germinate and grow inside of me so that I can face my challenges with the grace I've seen in others.

never small on 9/11

Last night's late-night post seems irreverent today.  The light of day (no matter how dazzling and beautiful) can make things like that seem so small when so many families grieve on an occasion such as this.

Makes me think about the anniversary of any death: how the world shrinks to the space around you, while everyone else is complaining about their taxes or trying to figure out when they'll take that family vacation and you're richocheting against the walls of the smallest prison, pain so intense you can hardly breathe.

My attempt to honor that pain and give space in the debris for the way you mourn, however that way may be.

Hold your loved ones close and know that they do the same, whether they're here or in heaven.

not about the bow tie

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody.  Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it.  Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are comprised as a human being.  You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.  -Maurice Sendak

I'll tell you what - I'm tired of feeling like the very sky is falling down around me, raining bits of blue-gray ceiling tiles onto my head.  I'm tired of worrying that I'll look up and find a hole way up there through which a yawning void of nothing threatens to invade.  I'm tired of feeling a clench in my stomach each time I anticipate anything that requires movement.  I'm tired of worrying over the when and the how.

Yesterday afternoon Max slept in his carrier (fresh from a trip to Target) while Alice brought me fistfuls of plastic food.  She made hamburgers and sandwiches and ice cream cones.  Fruit and eggs and maple syrup (for the hamburger, of course).  She ran to me with delight in her eyes and a smile on her face for the sheer joy of seeing me looking back at her.

Maurice Sendak passed away on Tuesday.  I'm sure you all know that, and maybe some of you don't agree with his politics.  And maybe some of you don't even like his books (Where the Wild Things Are, Little Bear, etc.).  But the man had a distinct sense of the side of childhood we don't often acknowledge - and I love him for that.  Because as I'm thinking so hard about the childhood I'm crafting for my own two little people - worrying over their naps and dirty diapers and developmental needs, I often forget how truly messy childhood really is.  And how messy, naturally so, parenthood is.  I try for perfection and really that isn't the best way to serve my little people.  They need the mess.  They need the bumps and bruises.  Because no matter what I do, those things are going to come for them anyway.

So here's to giving our children imperfection and revelling in it.  And here's to Mr. Sendak.  He will be missed.

I don't believe in children.  I don't believe in childhood.  I don't believe that there's a demarcation.  'Oh you mustn't tell them that.  You mustn't tell them that.'  You tell them anything you want.  Just tell them if it's true.  If it's true you tell them.  -Maurice Sendak

and then you get up in the morning

The numbers run like this:

Twenty-three days.

Twenty-two nights.
Eight hotels.
Five states.
Two time zones.
Several dozen tanks of gas.
More fast food than a person should ever consume.
A pair of very happy grandparents.
One overjoyed Alice.
One brand new nephew.
Several family dinners.
One porch-viewed lightening storm.
A graveside visited and cried over.
Ashes scattered over one lazy curve of the Colorado river.
More hours than were meant to be counted in a car.
Precious handfuls of time spent with the parents.



How many memories were collected in the pages of my mind to be pored over when the sun is not so bright, when time has spent itself, when I am closeted away in the dark winter?



We are home, and so happy to be here. But just one day before reaching our dusty porch, in one last night spent away from familiar bed and roof, one last surprise waiting for us: dear Chip was laid off, part of a corporate restructuring of which Chip wasn't the only casualty--- there are a lot of fancy words used to describe it, words that have become far too familiar for so many of us of late.



But new challenges await us, this is something I know. We have each other, and we have faith. There is beauty to be found even in these pavement cracks. I've laid low for this many days, collecting my thoughts and coming to a place where I am able to share these words with you. In the meantime, life beckons. The days roll on. Alice is growing and wanting more of me to stretch her mind and lengthen the reach of her understanding. She reminds me that even when the daily foundation of my life seems destined to quake - even when I feel like the planet should stop spinning for an hour while I try to catch my breath - even when everything is changing and I can't hold on to a sliding bit of it---- the days still shift and turn, the sun goes down, night noises descend on the house and sleep--whatever small bit of it--comes. And then you get up in the morning.

the cope

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I remember watching hours of CNN during hurricane Katrina and its terrible aftermath. Crying babies and their frightened mothers, covered in filth with no end in sight. News people wearing glaringly bright Gortex jackets, hoods pulled tight around their fresh-scrubbed faces as they reported from scenes too horrible to contemplate.

There was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. CNN again, in loud staccato bursts showing images of mass devastation. Wobbly video recordings portrayed a wall of roiling dark brown water--- matchstick structures riding the waves into swaying palm trees. And the faces streaked with muck, telling stories of heroism and heartbreak, eyes wild, scanning the distant horizon for some sign of relief.

The Haiti earthquake: schools of children sitting in terrified clusters amidst rubble too small to be recognized as the remains of structures. Rocks and sticks, really. Destruction underlined by the horrible panic of widespread violence: fathers digging beneath towering mounds of unmentionable death to seek the bodies of their children, scarecrow-thin arms hoisting rifles over their heads, firing into a bloody sky.

Flooding in Rio de Janeiro, Queensland, the Philippines. Earthquakes in Christchurch and Pakistan.

And of course now, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.

Each time I find myself drawn inexplicably to the coverage, the 24-7 inundation of terror: from the first shakey camera shots and the news anchors pulled out of bed to report on an unfolding scene of horror they don't understand --- to the rising collection of local news faces as they flock to the epicenter of disaster, jumping on planes streaking the sky only minutes after the initial shaking of the ground.

I don't know if it's something innately human or more specific to American culture or even a sickness designated independently to me, but in the wake of disaster my first impulse is to turn on the TV. I flip channels from local news to the wider lens of CNN and PBS. I let the television drone in the background of life circulations: stopping mid-stride to stand transfixed as I watch the news of families searching for signs of loved ones, elderly women staggering through the wreckage of their village, their eyes too weary for tears. I watch experts weigh in, their voices even and paced, as they talk about statistics and epicenters from their brown leather chairs in a New York studio. This in stark contrast to the scenes they narrate: human beings reduced to their most humble and base circumstance, standing in a world so dramatically foreign to the one they have lived in.

I linger on images of tennis shoes knocked into telephone wires and a vast sea of white cars piled on one another, as far as the eye can see.

It's the same each time. In a few hours or several, after one day or three, my internal disaster meter glows red. With shaking hands and a heavy heart, I turn the television off. I turn the radio dial to black. I shut myself away from the tragedy. One more image will send me into a spiral of hopelessness and inaction.

I turn it off so that I can remember quiet, so that I can reflect on wholeness, so that I can feel normal.

There is a point in human horror when I know that I can't take one more image of sisters and brothers being pulled from unimaginable wreckage. To push myself beyond that limit is to risk stripping away my carefully grown coping mechanisms. To watch any more reports of devastation is to cause irreparable damage to my soul. In order for me to have hope, I have to cultivate it within myself - and in order to have the right environment for hope to grow, I have to feel peace in my heart. And peace, for me, is best found in the table scraps of every day repetition.

It's something I don't understand about myself well enough to explain it to you, other than to say it is so. And I'm not proud of this pattern of retreat, either--- I am trying to decide if it's a survival skill or a nasty wall of Western Obliviousness.

Be that as it may, these days I am watching a repeating cycle of Super Why and Scooby Doo, memorizing Alice's delightful face as she learns to ride her tricycle. I plead fervent prayers of hope and empathy for everyone affected by recent world events. I do things small and quiet to help in my own way, from this corner of the world.

And I give thanks that I have this peaceful corner to retreat to, when so many do not.



What do you do? How do you handle world disasters? And as your children grow, how do you help them to cope?

after friday

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I've written seven different posts, seven different ways.

Each one has been abandoned, just partially written: unacceptable.

Because everything I could talk about is so small: small worries, small bumps, small inconveniences. Small things buried beneath waves of grief in the world.

Today I am thankful for everything small in my life.

A small head to pull close, to kiss her hair.

A small house, safe and whole.

A (not so small) husband with strong arms, ready to hold my small self.

And this, a small way to help.