Tendril

It’s June and I haven’t seen a flower yet. Last year’s photos have date-stamped three luscious raspberry-colored blooms on May 30.  I study the intricate web of vines on the trellis intently, spotting a rash of drooping buds. I trace the source to a dead branch, mourning all the lost beauty this late-stage miscarriage steals from my world.

In my quest to autopsy an inexplicable passing, I’m now analyzing the entire clematis network. The three, maybe four, distinct plants at the base are hopelessly knotted together at the top. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was diligently training the new growth to map across the width of the trellis for an even display? I begin to question whether the spectacular show of red, pink, and purple flowers I am eagerly anticipating will materialize. Maybe they are strangling each other due to my neglect?  

Early in the season I always think I can manage the canvas, winding tender strands in and out of the trellis face, ensuring they find a structure to hold onto, but they move with the speed of curious toddlers, off exploring the world around them if you look away for a second. A whispered reprimand echoes in my head: “If only I had stayed on top of it . . .”

The vines have surpassed the height of the trellis, winding around each other, flopping over on themselves, branches ready to shear from their own weight. He says they’re reaching for the sun.  The canopy of our seasoned maple tree shades the trellis now and the vines are searching for the light. I climb a step ladder, a spool of fishing line and a pair of pruning shears in my hand. My strategy is to separate the tangled vines, push them over the top of the trellis and anchor them with fishing line so they’ll continue to grow down the other side.

But the unwinding is not meant to be. These tiny shoots that appear so fragile sprout with a mighty coiling system cleaving them to their closest neighbors, whether that’s the rope on the bird house, the chain link of the pendant light swinging from the end of the trellis, or the vine next door.  

He suggests I cut back the straining vines before they break and I am faced with grieving more buds that will never bloom. This is probably the right answer, and at the same time it pains me, until I consider the stem in a vase of water and the possibility of an indoor show.   

I swear under my breadth in a resigned surrender; somewhat embarrassed to find myself in yet another situation I was certain I could control, the last one to realize it was never up to me in the first place. Like all of us, everything they need to thrive is already within them.  We just need to let them find their way, and sit back and marvel at the beauty and wonder they bring to the world.

Revolution

I remember the days of change-rolling.  Before the financial institutions had electronic counters, we picked up heavy-weight paper sleeves sized for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, filled them to the top and carefully folded the extra paper over the last coin to seal the tube.  We returned the coins to the bank in exchange for paper money.  The idea that change picked up here and there, carelessly discarded by people who felt they could do without, could be swapped for the rare and coveted dollar bill was a bit magical.  As a kid this was a boon, as a young adult it was a survival tactic.

Money was tight in the early years out on my own, and I was stubborn. From the moment I declared I was moving out to live in a seedy apartment complex I would later learn was a hotbed for drug dealers, I was going to make it, no matter what, without help from my parents.  At first, I played the float game with checks, mailing at the last possible second before the bill was due.  When married life and kids brought severe credit card debt, we upped our game, jumping on the carousel of minimum payments, with calliope music taunting and curse words for the carny who had long left his post and forgotten to stop the ride,   Just when we thought we were at our wits end, one of us would get a good commission or bonus check, the tax refund would sail in or grandma would send a Thanksgiving card with a few bucks for pumpkin pie. 

Thankfully, after fifteen years or so, the scales eventually came into balance. My salary slowly ticked up over time, I made life changes that transformed spending habits, got a loan to pay off debt, and put myself on a path that prioritizes security over status. But those early years were impossibly hard, and I’ve never forgotten them.  There were many sleepless nights, hysterical sobbing when the checkbook was literally at zero, the questioning of my own capabilities to be an adult and manage money.  There were so many times I wanted to admit I couldn’t do it, so many times I wanted to ask for help.

I see the slow rolling boil with my kids. Sometimes it’s about to spill over, and I want to rush in to turn down the heat before there is a mess on the stove. I think I know what’s going through their heads, that they are wrestling with asking for help, but at the same time not sure they want to let that cat out of the bag. Veiled comments hang in the air between us. I’m not sure I want the cat out of the bag either.

I think about what stopped me from asking for help.  Pride, for sure, but also the fact that I believed deep down the choices I was making about what and how to spend money and live my life would be brought into question. I wasn’t even sure I liked my choices at the time; I certainly wasn’t ready to defend what I thought would be judged.  I didn’t want anyone else to know the business of a life I was still trying to decide how to run. I needed my bad choices to fly under the radar until I could make better ones.  I kept it all under wraps and in the process became resourceful and resilient.  In my silent suffering I found my mettle. I cemented my self-worth. I proved to myself I belonged on this planet as an adult capable and deserving of being trusted to care for the humans I was blessed to have under my watch.  When I had a plan to clean up my act that I was confident I could defend and execute, that was the moment I asked for help.

Is my past behavior a predictor of future behaviors of my kids?  Probably not.  There isn’t any guarantee my kids are thinking exactly as I did, but I do know they watched my every move while they were growing up.  They know my methods and my ways.

And so I try not to jump in and turn down the flame when the pot looks like it’s about to boil over.  I remind myself it’s not my kitchen anymore.  They are writing the recipe for their lives with ingredients I wouldn’t necessarily choose for myself.  Some dishes will taste fantastic, others will go straight into the garbage.

They’ll do this generation’s version of change-rolling. They will have sleepless nights and do some occasional sobbing. They will question themselves. It will not be easy, and they will learn and grow. They will figure it out and ask for help when they are ready, when they can confidently defend their choices, and have a solid plan they know they can execute.

Undertow

Is it possible to miss something before you even leave it?  This question pops into my head as I’m waiting for our coffee to be poured and crafted, staring into the searing turquoise waters of the Caribbean roaring into the shore.  Nothing makes me happier than time at the water’s edge. The sea represents unmatched beauty, the full range of life’s emotions from a quiet lapping to thrashing fury.  It can be soothing safety and a risky adventure all in one.  It’s your best companion on the walk beside you and solace when you need to be alone. 

Our idyllic vacation is nearing its end. I’m turbid with ambiguity knowing that more time has passed than is left. While the beauty and excitement I’ve eagerly anticipated for months is still in my face, I hear home beckoning with its soft coo of routine and security and the confidence of “you’ve got this.” I want to go back and at the same time I want to stay. 

It hasn’t helped that Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” found its way into my travel bag. I didn’t realize what this book was about when I packed it, I just knew I wanted to read her work. Almost four hours on the plane was plenty of time to be sucked into the vortex of her self-study on grief after the sudden death of her husband and constant companion of nearly 40 years.

She speaks of all the moments she dismissed, innocently distracted by the busy routine of daily life. She punished herself for not listening more intently, for not taking conversations more seriously, for brushing off the whispered foreshadowing that only hindsight can scream. 

I can be an intense vacationer. I count the days as they tick by. I know what I came for and I want as much of it as I can possibly pack in. I don’t like to rest. I don’t like the business of being inside when my business here is outside. I know I’m only in this place for a limited time, that I need to absorb as much of the magic my temporary surroundings have to offer, in this case sea and sand and sunshine, before they are not accessible to me anymore. I’m compelled to steep in my vacation circus, walking the tightrope of too much and not enough. 

He and I have been talking about dependence, the unspoken turning point in our relationship when we both realized he had me, that he is, hands down, the person I most want to spend my time with.  And it took the ache of absence for me to see it. I remember the moment vividly. He had been talking in what I considered to be veiled terms about leaving our visit with friends a night ahead of me.  I dismissed the comments as they were couched in the guise of allowing me more time on my own and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. When he kissed me goodbye in front of everyone and walked out the door I was devastated. “What do you mean,” I wanted to scream.  “You can’t leave without me.” But instead I kept the peace. Would it send my friends the wrong message about my feelings for them if I objected?  What would it say about this independent woman’s dependence on her man?  

It was a long night alone in a strange bed when it dawned on me: I was already in deep and I wouldn’t be floating to the surface again. 

Always the scout, Didion now prods me to look ahead into an imagined future, one where he abruptly leaves me, this time against his will, in the care of loving friends who don’t have a prayer of consoling me. Will I sit in a dark room again wondering why I didn’t take him seriously when he tried to warn me?

And so I’m cursing Joan Didion a little, for so blatantly planting in my head the seeds of consequence of a true and meaningful love. When we love someone to the depths of emotional dependence, we have no choice but to suffer unimaginable grief when that person is gone.

Love is such a brutal and beautiful surrender.  We think we know exactly where we are in its waters.  We won’t swim out too far, we’re stronger than its current, we can always make it back to shore. We believe we can walk that tightrope of just enough to feel romantically happy, yet not so much to be hurt measurably and irrevocably if it all suddenly disappears.  

Maybe we don’t miss something before we leave it, maybe it’s more about anticipating how we’ll feel when it’s gone and trying to ward off grief.  The impulse is to go overboard, to try to pay rapt attention, to not waste a minute, to savor every moment, but we’ll fail miserably.  The best we can do is strive to be attuned and recognize that when we’re in this deep there is no escaping grief. That’s not how love works. 

Abide

I only cry when I see them together. I’m fine when I am with one or the other separately. It sneaks up on me, a sweet and achy homesickness for a time we can never live in again. Something about the way they are with each other brings me back to the way they were as kids, when we called the house with the purple front door home. I was very deliberate when they were growing up to do everything in my power to make sure that love took hold between the two of them, carefully pouring the cement in hopes of an unbreakable bond.

I’m so grateful, and sometimes amazed, we made it through the hard times. When I think back on my parenting, I wish I had loved on them more. I wish I had more clearly demonstrated my intention to be a shelter, a place where mistakes were accepted, where rescues were generously dispatched, where imperfections were celebrated. Instead, I was too worried about whether they were unknowingly slamming the door on bright futures, blemishing their permanent records with indelible marks, and if I’m being completely honest, lamenting what the latest drama would say about me.

I got in my own way a lot; one time too many when they were hurting in plain sight and I couldn’t see them because I was hurting too much myself, or couldn’t face my own limitations, couldn’t muster the courage to ask for help. And for those times they desperately and effectively hid their hurts; I wish my superpower had been x-ray vision. I wonder if I made a big enough deal in the moments of joy.

They are two very different people. I made a point of showing them that early and often, explaining how they fit together, how the strengths of one complimented the other. I’ll never forget the time at the kitchen table when I was worrying about my oldest, and my youngest said, “Mom. This is how he is.  He’ll figure it out. He always does.”  The faith he had in his brother was unyielding.  I wished I’d had that faith myself. In that moment I understood that they know each other in ways I will never know them.

Mostly what I want is the promise they will have each other when they no longer have me. I want them to remember who and how we were together and be able to talk about it with someone who can laugh at the inside jokes, who can tell the story of “that one time when . . .”, the person who can recall the names of the random people in the photographs, the one who can repeat by heart the burnished phrases that made us who we are.

But I can’t control what happens when I’m gone. I can’t even control what happens now, while I’m here.  We each own our relationships and choose to stay connected and hone them, or not.

This might just be why I cry when I see them together:  Tears of sadness that I can’t broker this brotherhood for them. Tears of hope that it will continue to flourish when I’m no longer able to bear witness.  Tears of joy that love may just have taken hold,   

Incendiary

Rolling up the blinds this morning, I’m not surprised to be greeted by a fresh blanket of snow covering the driveway. It seems as soon as the snowblower strips this metaphorical bed, Mother Nature is standing right behind, folding hospital corners and smoothing over its crisp whiteness. 

When there is literally no where to go, it’s easy to justify yet another snow day, this one to be used for making art.  I’ve ventured into watercolors on a larger scale. Fueled by a Call for Artists for an upcoming local show, I’m moving from the 4”X6” thumbnail paintings I’ve been learning on to 9”X12”, in all honesty, to justify the $30 entry fee (non-refundable whether my work is selected or not). Scaling up is more challenging than I thought, and I’m on my third version. Taking a page from Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolor book, it’s liberating to be able to call these iterations studies, with the same name alongside a unique number.  I feel like a real artist.

"Incendiary IV", 2021 Watercolor

My painting depicts a wildfire; the initial studies created in response to an assignment from my virtual watercolor class last fall.  We were asked to interpret a poem filled with descriptors about color. I chose instead to bring to life excerpts from an interview with California firefighters:  “The flames are enormous now, bright yellow blooms amid pink-and-purple smoke.”  “The skeletons of trees, whole forests, are clearly visible.”

I’m drawn to this theme for so many reasons.  From a purely artistic viewpoint, it’s the opportunity to use bold, bright colors and allow the pooling water to swirl them into new shades.  It’s a direct message about the consequences to our environment, increasingly stiff penalties levied on the complicity short-sightedness for personal gain is driving.And it’s also representative of our turbid times, the pervasiveness of heated debate, and the inability to tamp down the flames.  

This winter's excruciating pain stems, in part, from a lack of connection.  Trapped inside, it’s hard not to resort to our television sets and the 24X7 “news” that seems filled with nothing but sensationalized divisive drama. It’s analogous to lighting a match under ourselves and wondering why everything is burning. I personally struggle striking the right balance between being aware of current events and smothered by the negativity.  I’ve had to learn how to take my own temperature and pull myself from the stifling heat of the oven of myopic rhetoric.

What really saddens me is how the divisiveness is infiltrating our personal lives.  We’re no longer watching a faraway fire destroy someone else’s house.  Our own homes are burning as our relationships become less than:  Either because we are aware friends and loved ones hold an opposing position and shy away from them in order to keep the peace, or we choose to sever relationships completely, heavy smoke rendering it impossible for us to see everything we know and love about that individual.

The idea that we are our own worst enemies, having created our own messes, was recently put in front of me.  It took me back immediately to healing from my divorce, and what a turning point it was for me to realize that wedding vows bind us together to manage whatever life deals us from outside the union; we are not meant to endlessly endure pain deliberately inflicted from within the union. The world hadn’t handed us unmanageable problems, in fact we had it pretty good.  All our wounds were self-inflicted and we were too naive, too proud, too hurt to summon the vulnerability it would have taken to move past them.  We started our own fires innocently enough, stoked them unintentionally and were surprised to watch them rage bigger than we were.   

  

Water is the antidote to fire. Cold the opposite of heat.  Winter a time of hibernation, inward focus.  Can we use this forced isolation to look at ourselves and ask what part we play?  Where are we lighting matches, wielding bellows or pouring gasoline?  How much water would it take to put out our personal fires?  Just like a watercolor painting, this work takes patience, especially at a larger scale. And just like this winter’s snowfall, it can seem like we’re making progress toward brighter days, only to be dumped on again. 

Getting to the finished work of art requires a steady build of layers that need to dry to some degree in between.  It’s the delicate dance of controlled chaos. Thinking we can predict the exact outcome and rushing to the finish we see in our mind’s eye destroys the painting. Human beings striving to understand each other need the discipline and desire to sit in thoughtful dialogue, ask probing questions, alternately layering on viewpoints, absorbing what the other has said.  What gets me about watercolor every time is that the painting doesn't look like much throughout most of the process.  It’s not until the final moments that it really comes to life, and always, always in the most surprising ways. 

What if we discarded everything we think we know about each other, and instead were willing to embark on a journey of discovery together?  Can our relationships be the blanket of fresh snow cover that finally douses the fire, the phoenix that rises anew from these smoldering ashes?  

Ikigai

"What gets you up in the morning?" It's the question I'm tasking myself, and my treasured friends in Book Club, to answer at the dawn of this new year.  Our Book Club, we discovered after doing a little research through our electronic libraries, has been in existence for nearly ten years!  Time flies when you're discussing good books with great people.  Over the years we've reserved our January meeting for an art project.  With the craziness of the holidays, it's hard to find time to read in December, so we use our time at the beginning of the year to contemplate all that we want to be different in our lives in the new year and express those wishes through art.  Intentions, a single descriptive word, and resolutions are documented and interpreted in vision boards, journals or flags.  I can't wait to see how my pals express what propels them to rub the sleep from their eyes, pull back the covers and rise to greet the day.

After seven years in the same role at my office, I am making a fresh start in a brand new position.  Ironically, it was the pandemic and associated lockdown that begged me relentlessly to disrupt myself.  While eternally grateful to remain employed in such dire economic times which have robbed so many of so much, when stripped of all those activities that make up what really matters in life, I became acutely aware that the passion and joy I derived from work had somehow slipped away, too.  The environment had changed around me, and I realize now I spent way too much time hoping each change would yield new energy.  It was the gift of a leadership coach who helped me believe I was empowered to make the change I wanted to see.  I just needed to be brave enough to ask for it.

 

And so in the anomalous year that 2020 showed herself be, I stirred an already turbulent pot.  I searched for a new job and got married.  I established a home yoga practice outside of my beloved hot room, religiously took a daily walk, and began on-line art classes where I continued to hone drawing skills, learned how to paint with watercolors and became part of a Facebook drawing community whose members faithfully and generously supported each other as we courageously shared all our wonky attempts to learn something new.  I became a better cook, and baked quantities of Christmas cookies that could not possibly be consumed by the select few in our bubble.

And as I'm writing this I recall recently thinking that the best part of my day is waking up to see how my watercolor paintings have dried, signing my name and slicing a butter knife around the paper block to release them into the world.  

I would have to travel great distances in the way back machine to recall this much newness in such a short period of time in the chronicles of this old life of mine.  But that's the thing, right?  Who among us wasn't having a hard time at some point in the last year mustering up the energy to face each new day with the joy and appreciation it deserves?  We are forced to disrupt ourselves in order to thrive. As I look back on a truly extraordinary year, I see now that every new thing I have created in the last 300 days was done so out of necessity.  How else was I going to get up in the morning?

Stargazer

Maybe he’s eight years old?  It’s hard for me to gauge anymore, with my child rearing years indelible in the rear-view mirror.  He’s on his bicycle, wearing a helmet, coasting down the street I’m walking in the glorious, gauzy light of a dawning Saturday morning. I expect a parent, or some other adult to be in tow, and I’m a little surprised when no one materializes.  He is alone.  I wonder how many times he had to beg at his parents’ feet to be allowed out the door unchaperoned to taste his own burgeoning abandon.

With more than 150 days logged in this pandemic, I find myself deeply rooted in monotony.  My shoes have worn ruts in the same handful of roads. Every day is ground hog’s day, a haunting routine I struggle to break.  It does not go unnoticed nor unappreciated that I am employed, and largely unaffected economically.  For this I am grateful.  I am fortunate to be wrestling with the challenges at the tip of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs because I am blessed with what must be fulfilled in order to keep climbing.

Those who know me well have heard me repeat my belief that this time will transform us if we allow it.  It’s the allowing that is hard.  I have known for a long time I need a change. I made a deliberate choice three months ago to set the wheels in motion during this unprecedented tumultuous time, and now I am suffering the interstice. It would be super easy for me to blame others, to blame the times, to second guess my choice to disrupt myself amid the mother of all disruptions. And yet this is exactly what I signed up for, eyes wide open.  I have walked into the fire.

Opportunities that allow me to self-actualize, to become the best version of myself that I can possibly be have not materialized.  Or have they?  Maybe the opportunities are in front of me, just not in a package that I expect?  Or maybe the package isn’t attractive enough yet because I haven’t been a part of creating what’s inside?  Why am I hiding in my safe yet powerless corner expecting someone to deliver to me my dream job?  Where is the child in me pleading her parent to allow her to saddle up and coast down the street, unattended chasing new adventure? 

Oh, the questions!  The hard, hard questions howling to be answered.

On my walk back from the coffee shop, I hear a peel of laughter and look to see the boy again, pedaling effortlessly with a look of sheer joy on his face, lost in his imagination. As his delicious giggle pierces the quiet of the dawn, it dawns on me that this is exactly how we transform.  When we allow ourselves the permission of time and space to revel and ruminate in what could be, we give birth to the world we want for ourselves. This is where the magic happens. It’s time to hop on my bike and dream.