family

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Mantle: words in brief

I feel something wrapping around my husband and me in recent months, an ease settling around our shoulders, a trust deeply excavated. We married when I was twenty-three. Who knows what kind of luck at that young age found me a life partner to grow into, resilient to the bruises and stresses and close calls of a long-lasting relationship. Twenty years later, I again feel something arise like infatuation, my heart skipping a beat when he is near. What comes back to me is a line from our wedding service, the planning of which was hobbled by my resistance to trappings and details and traditions. But the bare, clean bones of ceremony were what entranced me, I realize, now that I have learned to value the speaking of words to make things happen. “Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle upon their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads.” It was the magic of the words that convinced me then, as it does again when I recall them. A few years later, we flew to Bulgaria for the wedding of my closest university friend. The Bulgarian Orthodox wedding service, we discovered, was a literal enactment of the same words. Crowns balanced and mantles draped, a choir chanting the service from high in a hidden loft, and the couple walking around and around the altar’s perimeter, silently, until something like a spell had been cast.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: mantle.

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Gloves: words in brief

Going for walks at my parents’ house usually involves a large loop, twenty minutes each time along a quiet road. This used to bother me, now I find it meditative and simple, easy to add up. My mother and I went out for a walk each morning of last week’s visit. The south-east corner of the loop is wooded, mostly private property, but connecting to a marshland on the nearby small lake, where my dad and I sometimes paddle. Heading towards that corner one morning with my mother and kids, we saw a dark low shape on the road. Moving, but so very slightly we though it might be a living thing injured. We approached it with trepidation. As we neared, we made out the low, slow shape of a snapping turtle crossing the road. A car approached behind us. I waved frantically, flagged it down. It swerved around the turtle. A man and child got out and told us the snappers had been laying eggs on the north side of that corner. They sped off. Tentatively, we approached the turtle. My older son immediately volunteered to relocate her. I instructed him to hold the shell on both sides of the tail, keep a firm grip, as I had seen others do. He tried, found her much squirmy than he had expected, asked for gloves. Gardening gloves retrieved from the house as we guarded the corner from cars, he tried again. He lifted her over the pavement carefully, placed her down on the grass on the other side. A moment later, a huge truck heaved around the loop, taking up both narrow lanes. We walked home, my son skipping a little. I said to him, “You are often nervous about small things, often worry unnecessarily. But when action is needed, you are decisive. You are the first to act.” He walked home even taller than his now two inches taller than his mother.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: gloves. We moved the turtle one more time that morning, this time crossing back towards the marsh.

 

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Folded: words in brief

I folded myself around my son at the end of the day. Late: 11:15. He still tells me cuddling helps him sleep. Last night, our popular city counselor of many years was hosting one of his movie nights at the tiny park at the bottom of our street. A Wrinkle in Time, one of my favourite books in my pre-teen years. My name is translated as Margaret in English. Meg, the name of every bookish, over-sensitive, but secretly very brave literary heroine of my childhood. I can’t bring myself to watch the movie. The boys went down to watch with friends. My husband and I, so desperate for any time alone, are now efficient about using it, like teens. Earlier in the afternoon, he left work early to join us for the closing of the kids beloved outdoor program. Me, now, always: “Is this the last time?” I look around the small clearing in the ravine, every family at a crossroads of one sort or another. The kids are lean, gangly, a few taller than the adults. My younger son still reaches only to my chin, although he claims to be taller. He says, “Can you cuddle with me until I’m as tall as you?” How can I rush this? That day will come too soon.

From my daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: folded.

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Belonging: words in brief

I hum with the thrill of belonging in my body as I handle my slim metal steed through the hot city streets, speed fueling my lungs and cooling my skin. I am at the head of my small flock of two, the mother goose: glancing back, calling instructions, signaling. Modeling the appropriate mix of courage and caution. I’ve crashed only twice on the road, on the same day years ago, the first time I rode across the city. No-one had warned me of the dangers of streetcar tracks. Twice my wheels caught the slippery groove on left turns and spun free, bucking me off to the pavement’s sharp burn. No cars were close enough to hit me. I limped out of the intersection, climbed painfully back on, pedaled home; it would have been a long walk. Potential collisions explode like fireworks in my brain as I navigate the streets. I push them away, stay attuned to both danger and joy. I am alive now. There is no other way.

Back to my daily email writing group after a break for most of May, aiming for another hundred day stretch. I will continue to repost here periodically, because why not? This is yesterday’s prompt, day one: belonging. 

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On burning things

Taking a short break from my recent daily writing prompts this month, I find myself rereading things I wrote prior to starting up that daily practice. Longer pieces, poems, essays. Sometimes I am moved, sometimes confused. A year or two passes and it’s easy to forget the intensities of any one moment, and also the wisdom that comes out of those intensities. Some things I read make me wince a little, or smile wryly: “Who is this person? Maybe I should listen to what she says.”

There’s an expansiveness in what I read that is not part of how I feel right now.

This past winter, a winter of daily practice, of discipline, of retreat, I wondered where my fire had gone. I missed it, but also didn’t. I missed the connectivity and expansiveness and energy of a few years ago. I missed the vision. But it no longer nourished me. I could finally articulate it plainly to myself and others: I was burnt out.

A few days ago, I said some of this to a friend, with nostalgia but also with an emerging gratitude. She reminded me that when we met two or three years ago, I told her I wished I could write more, but I couldn’t find the time. I was organizing, collaborating, learning, scheduling, planning, supporting others, driving here and there, expending emotional energy and labour. My labour was rewarded in intangible ways, but certainly not renumerated. I was saying yes to everything, on an energy high, not mindful of the costs.

Now, she pointed out, I am no longer doing all those things, but I am writing every day. I am tending much that I neglected then. I’ve found the time.

Earlier this week I said no to something, as I so often do right now, and I wrote to my closest friend, my constant witness: “I feel like I am going around burning things and then being sad that they are gone, but needing to keep on burning anyways.” This is not a new feeling. It’s been with me since at least since last summer, when I stepped away from a big group commitment that I had worked towards for years. It had been creeping up for some time before that, in departures and unravellings of various kinds. I’ve written before about spirals. But it’s only in the last few months that I’ve been able to fully name the sense of ending. Slowly, gently, to lose my paralyzing fear of it and find the freedom instead.

What confused me for a long time was that I thought I’d already done this, when my kids were born, when I left my job, when I turned away from who I had always expected myself to be. But perhaps I simply found new expectations to impose upon myself.

Or perhaps it’s those cycles again, the cycles I keep finding everywhere I look.

Waldorf educators write a lot about seven year cycles. In adulthood as well as childhood. Clarissa Pinkola Estes does the same in Women Who Run with the Wolves. Death and rebirth is a constant in our lives, if we look at them with awareness. Not linear progress. Cycles of death and rebirth. Seasons. Non-linear, non-Western, non-modern time. Last year, at forty-two, I realized that perhaps a cycle was ending.

Cycles of course don’t need to mean full severance. I have been with the same partner for close to twenty-five years now. Our relationship has moved through many cycles. Encompassed joy and grief. Falling in love, taking each other for granted, periods of disconnection, falling in love again, deepening. It has been several different relationships already, and will be several more before we are done. Like an organism bigger than the sum of our two selves, it’s something we need to tend and feed regularly. I am reminded of this often, of how easy it is to disconnect in small ways, to go our separate ways, to not talk about difficult things, to find emotional sustenance elsewhere. Connection is easy to find, but this big project of a marriage of almost two decades, of co-creating a family, of co-creating a home, it’s hard but deeply satisfying. It nourishes my soul and teaches me the biggest lessons.

In the same way, everything I’ve learned and experienced in every part of my life is still mine to keep. As is each connection, each collaboration. It’s all absorbed into the whole, one thread of many, one piece of a puzzle which some day I may be able to see more clearly than I do now, although at each new turn of the wheel it already becomes a little clearer.

I read a book last month called The Joy of Missing Out. It was mainly about technology, and about the exhausting connectivity of the online world. It was about fasting, taking breaks, learning how to moderate our constant contact. But I imagine it also as a bigger choice. At some point in life, we discover we can’t Do All the Things. The cost is too big. Right now, as I have sometimes in the past, I find myself closing doors to make space in myself for whatever needs to happen next. I find myself curious again.

Or as my friend replied, when I spoke – tired, but certain – of burning: “Burning makes fertile ground. Just remember that.” Another kind of fire, with another purpose.

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Ancient: words in brief

Ninety years is not ancient for a tree, but it seems to be the lifespan of the tall maples on our street. Now that half of our neighbours’ tree has cracked and fallen, the rest is under suspicion, marked with an orange slash of paint for removal. Today the wind is wild and violent, swirling garbage in the air, tearing away shingles, knocking off tree branches. My children agonize that the second half of the tree will fall, this time on our house. Our streetscape has changed. A handful of the tallest maples have been removed in little more than the same number of years. The arch of green over our short street, the cooling summer shade, the racoon sleeping pads and squirrel dreys, we’re losing those. The street looks lopsided, denuded. I rant to myself: “If only someone had had the foresight to plant more trees fifty years ago!” But now we must be patient, place our hopes in the future. The spindly ten-year-old maple in our front yard has a lot of growing to do.

From last Friday. Word prompt: ancient. Fortunately, the maple in front of our neighbours’ house stayed up, but for days afterwards I have been seeing giant trees that were downed by that day’s violent winds. After a 100 day stretch of daily writing, my small group is taking a break for part of May. Now every day I wonder what it is that I’ve forgotten to do…

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Thievery: words in brief

This morning, I woke early, considered getting up to write, then got back into bed and curled up cozily, mind drifting. I thought, maybe it’s more important to lie my head on my husband’s chest, listen to his heart beating, take in his warmth, than follow whatever wants to drag me out into the world. I wondered how many years we have left together. I wondered which of us will be left mourning the other, which one’s last days will be untended. It’s all thievery at the end, I’m starting to suspect, all bits and pieces dropping away. The happy ending, if you get it, is the middle part, when you might not even notice because of life pulling every which way. After that, who’s willing to tell the rest of the story? The truth is, I’m no longer skimming ahead to find out what’s next. I’m going to linger here for a while, savouring each word.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: thievery. From one day last week.

 

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Gnarly: words in brief

The beach, when we reached it down the slippery stone path, was mostly underwater, all stones, no sand. Lake Huron was startlingly calm, a clear blue flatness mirroring the sky, demarcated by a thin line at the horizon. We were inside a globe of blue and white, the round world holding us in its sphere. The sky held long wispy clouds, like strands of wool pulled apart by giant hands, delicately stretched thin. A couple of tall trees with gnarly twisted roots were strewn across the stones, pulled up by another passing giant, this one careless. I picked my way over stones and driftwood of all sizes, watched from a distance as Conan taught the boys to skip stones, the ripples reverberating neatly on the glassy lake. They were tiny people at the corner of my sight, specks. I stood still and breathed in the strange comfort of our smallness.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: gnarly.

 

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Fritter: words in brief

This morning, I felt spring clarity and space. Brightness, despite the raging storm. I did not want to fritter away any of my day. I began to clean my desk, sort through handwork baskets and supplies, organize projects, read through a pile of library books on textile art. I made a list of projects that need to be finished or begun: knitting, embroidery, my grandmother’s diary to transcribe and translate. As I tried out a Japanese sashiko mending technique on a torn shirt, I heard a crash. “A tree branch is down across the road!” one of my sons called out. Pause. “It’s landed on a car!” Pause. “The wire is on fire!” I jumped up, ran downstairs. The afternoon took a detour. Our neighbours’ huge maple had been split in two by the wind, wires were down and a concrete hydro pole cracked to the ground. Fire flared briefly on the wires. A confused robin dashed about underneath the debris. The fire crew arrived in minutes. The power will be out for a couple of days. We are fortunate, with family in the city. We have relocated. My plans are derailed for the moment, everything a little off-kilter. The new moon is tonight, but my dream for ritual is deferred. The streets are icy, treacherous and bleak, the wind howls, the rain continues to pour. The small spring flowers are crushed under the snowy crust. But as the ice pelted my window this afternoon, I heard a loudly vocal cardinal, still frantically singing.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: fritter.

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Shadow (2): words in brief

I am noting a shadow lately on my almost-teen’s upper lip. A couple of months ago he said to me in alarm, “When I woke up this morning, my voice sounded strange. I didn’t recognize it.” I could hear it too. His singing voice has now descended into bass, like his dad’s. Every week he is taller, lankier, more like an adolescent, more like a man. I told him at dinner last night, after a conversation with two mothers of teens, “I understand why you are so tired recently. You are completely re-forming. Like a caterpillar to a butterfly.” “Oh great,” he grimaced, “I’m going to liquefy and reconstitute.” None of us look forward to changes that huge, that painful, that necessary. We hold our breath, haul in our reserves, squint skeptically at the miracle of flight promised on the other side.

From my current daily writing practice with three women across the continent. Word prompt: shadow.  The first time the same word has come up more than once. But what a versatile word it is.