In His Image

 "So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them:  male and female."  The first time I truly absorbed this as my own, as a female, was a bit of a temblor for me.  I wanted to run barefoot into the backyard because, all alone, I was  standing on holy ground in front of the unsayable presence of God in a burning bush.  I was shattered by the idea that all of me in my womanhood was a reflection of God, not just an afterthought of man, a secondary, a helper, a companion, but part of the fullness of the picture of Who God Is, without whom the picture of Him is not complete.  It took me a long time  to accept God for Who He was trying to tell me He was and not to see Him as a presentation from others. Sometimes listening to others' representations made me dislike God a little bit with every telling.  I heard His voice as my dad's booming didactic, pistachio shaking, female belittling presentation and I felt, "no thanks." I took the long way around back to Him just to avoid many perceived Herods and I had to strain to hear His voice above the din.  Hilariously when I heard God tell me that I was made in His image, I  didn't bask in the revelation for long.  No, I immediately ran to tell my dad.  And my dad did not disappoint.  "That's ridiculous, God isn't some sort of giant hermaphrodite"  In my head brayed, "No shit Sherlock, I was just telling you, God isn't a giant version of man, the great news is this:  all of the best of us, male and female, are a reflection of what is God."  So then we see, the no shit Sherlock part will indicate that I had a lot of growing still to do.  Why had I run to my father with this revelation?  Because I wanted him to understand the fullness of Who God could be for him? Or because I wanted to say, "Yeah your theosophy sucks and the way you twisted the bible against me nearly made me miss out on God."  We can probably guess that sticking my thumbs in my ears, waving my fingers and blowing raspberries was my motivator.  When will I ever grow up?

Yup, I have miles to go before I sleep.  My father has been dead for nearly ten years and I still have arguments with him in my head, especially every time I read something in the bible about God being like a mother and Jesus going out of his way to be kind to women.  I can feel my head start to waggle and a shiver of steel ram down my spine saying, "In your face Dad....and you too Paul you pharisaical misogynist."  But I am getting better.   As I grew up I craved my parents' approval, as I imagine all children do.  In order to gain my mother's I tried to hide my worst self and made a sneaky, not precisely true presentation of me.  To gain my father's approval I tried to be more like a boy...or less like a girl?  I would take out the garbage, mow the lawn, run faster, jump higher, try to be tougher, cry less (impossible), be smartest because somehow my father made me think that smart and male were synonymous. And my father approved.  Possibly I was making inferences that weren't being implied but I don't think so.   I cherished every attaboy I got.  I was listening to a book by Madeleine L'Engle called "Walking on Water" and she was blithely saying how she grew up in a home where "they were created in His image:male and female" was a given and she doesn't feel like she has to justify herself as a woman writer.  Lucky.  Indeed, I wanted to scratch her eyes out for a minute for having it so easy.

As I got older, being less of a girl continued to manifest itself as being louder, more aggressive, first with my hand up, first to finish the race.  This became a bit of a tightrope walk because loud, aggressive and domineering was not exactly how a young lady was supposed to comport herself. And as with all growing adolescents and young adults, parental approval was less of an umbilical cord. Precisely at this juncture, my family got involved with a cult.  Most of institutional religion smacks hard of patriarchy and putting women in a second class role.  But this little cult was run by a man named Barnabas who was dying to bring back the good old days of women in complete subservience.  Seen a Handmaid's tale?  That.  We had to wear head coverings, no makeup, only skirts.  All the restrictions seemed to be placed on the women and consequently my feelings toward God became conflated with my feelings towards this Barnabas quack and all his brood of viper followers.  Honestly we were only in the club for approximately a year but it changed me.  I went from 'Jesus loves me this I know', 'His Banner Over Me is Love' arms over head, point to self, hug myself, felt and sequined hand puppets of the Good News to-- I must hate Jesus because I don't want anything to do with any of these people and any of the bible they're reading and or any of the songs they're singing.  Fortunately Jesus wouldn't let me go.  He didn't let me hate Him.  He kept calling to me in a voice so different from the ones I was hearing that I was unable to completely shake Him off.

Then one day I was around sixteen and I told my mother I was extremely lonely, that I wanted to be loved, I wanted a boyfriend.  I think she was on the other side of the bathroom door because I couldn't look her in the eye to say these things.  But I can imagine her shaking her head with wisdom and knowledge as she said, "Meghan, let Jesus be your lover."  Man, was I annoyed.  This, from a woman who had a husband of probably at least 25 years, nine children, a house filled with noise and laughter and fighting and busyness and then a whole private love relationship with the boy she had loved since she was fourteen years old.  Thanks for nothing.  Self-centered and sixteen I could not hear what she was telling me.  I wanted the empty parts of me filled up with love, someone to see me and be crazy about me, somebody to listen to me, somebody to help fill the void.  I thought a man might give it a whirl.  

And yes, I've been incredibly lucky in love and this has gone a long way for me in helping to heal my personal war of the sexes.  I read something today in a "Grief Observed" by CS Lewis that made me nod along saying, "Yes, sir you are correct."

        "There is....a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.  It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as 'feminine.'  But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible.  Marriage heals this.  Jointly the two become fully human."  

Now obviously CS was also very lucky in love because marriage is not always the healing in the war of the sexes, is it?  In fact... enough said.  And yet I have had the opportunity to heal my regard for both men and women in my relationship first with my husband and then my sons and daughters.  I am not in a constant battle of self-justification and subsequent justification of all women.  I don't have to  be soprano in the Opera of Womanhood, singing the aria of female wondrousness because my husband doesn't need convincing, in fact sometimes he’s singing that high harmony for me.  On the flip side, I don't have to pay unnecessary obeisance to my husband and all of manhood because  he doesn't require it from a petty throne.  Simultaneously, I don't have to be angry with the entire male sex because I am not angry anymore…well not all the time anyway.  I am free to admire the qualities that I love about both my husband and my sons.  How horrible would it be to be at war with these children whom I loved at first sight  with a fierce and torn, aching  and exhausted heart.    Which makes me sad for my dad all over again.  What happened to him that he couldn't overcome his feelings against women by virtue of  the existence of his beautiful daughters?  How could the amazing patience and kindness of Wendy Harter not have bewitched him to worship at the altar of womankind? 

So let's circle back to my Mom telling me, "Let Jesus be your lover."  What did she mean?  Why point to Jesus as my lover?  Because her marriage wasn't healing her in the war of the sexes?  Possibly and probably, but I think she had discovered something much more profound.  Even in the best relationship where hurt is being healed and misunderstandings are being rectified, we cannot fill each other up in all the emptiest of spaces.  We can, together, be an echo, an image, a polaroid of the fulness of God.  But it’s not enough.  When the hot sweaty, feverish thrill of sex has dimmed, the poignancy and profundity of becoming one with another is magnified.  The receiving of another into your body, the entering in to someone else's body is a physical union to be sure, but the spiritual union is shocking, as earth shattering and body quaking as the climax itself.  Now here's where it pays to have no readers.  Talking about relationship with God and climax in the same context is a potential cringefest.  But I am not without precedent.  The Song of Solomon is a lush ode to sensuality and carnality wielded to  demonstrate the depth of love that God has for us.  When I read "Arise, my beautiful one and come with me."  That is a love note, a song, an invitation straight from God's heart to mine, saying, no matter how lost you get, I'm looking for you, I'm scanning the horizon anxiously searching for you.  As I have grown up and relinquished my childish grudges against  others' religiousness, I have allowed my ears to be unblocked so I can hear the love song being sung to me.  I hear it in the ocean, I hear it in the wind in the bamboo, I hear it when I read Isaiah, I hear it in my own tears when I just can't any more, I heard it the moment each of my children were born, I heard it when I fell in love with my husband, I hear in my sore throat when I've been screaming in frustration.  I hear it, I hear it, I hear it.

So my mother's advice of letting Jesus be my lover was something bigger, wider, longer, deeper.  She took my teenage complaint and heard my primal cry for completion that hearkens back to a time unremembered when I was complete and perfectly knitted in the image of God.  In her life experience she knew that a human being would never complete me in the way my heart was yearning for.  She jumped me out of time to the place where I needed to go and I couldn't hear her.  Because even now, when I have the closet thing to a perfect complementary partner in my life, it is not enough to fill the eternal longing.  My children, though they sparked a fire of love, company and challenge that I could never have anticipated, still do not fill the eternal longing.  My home, my things, my clothes, my garden, writing, singing, reading, friendship...all of these are only a reflection, an echo of a phrase in the love song that is being sung to me to woo me into communion, oneness, completion in God.  The song is "Let Me be the Lover of your soul, let Me see you in all your ways, heal you, love you, thrill at your every word, laugh at your stupid jokes, wait attentively for your smallest thought, let Me be one with you."  If I had grown up in a home like Madeleine L'Engle,  maybe I wouldn't have been so amazed by the revelation of belonging to God in celebration and complete acceptance of my female self.  I probably wouldn't  want to wash His feet with my tears and wipe them dry with my fading strawberry curls.  And even though my first instinct was to run across the playground to tattle to my father, I am growing.  My ears are opening and my heart of stone is becoming more absorbent.  I am opening myself up to the song being sung to me and I am hearing this:  we are made in His image and the whole, intricate long and short story is a reflection of the story of getting back to completion.  Selah.

Parosmia

 I have this thing, they're calling it Parosmia.  I know, it sounds like the fever-dream induced by psychedelic mushrooms.  Fair assessment. Here’s what we know: one of the indicators of Covid is some degree of  loss of the sense of smell and taste, aka anosmia.  Indeed, when I got sick with Covid I did lose some taste and smell.  Later, as I regained my sense of smell, it became this twisted mutation of what smell, and consequently taste, used to be: Parosmia. From what I’ve read the doctors think that  the nerve receptors are trying to relearn  how to send and receive the correct smell messages and in my case they’re not learning properly. My recalcitrant nerves.  I’ve read whatever information the studies are putting out on the subject and the consensus so far is, “ We’re not sure and no we don’t have substantial data or firm ideas for how it can be fixed”.  I have also read that 70 percent of those affected are women- so good luck ladies, we all know how seriously our “hysterias” have been taken over the centuries.

So what does Parosmia look like? Well, it smells and tastes wrong.   For example:  meat used to smell like meat, now it smells and tastes like the  flesh of  a Komodo dragon who has been in a death match  with the neighbor dragon and subsequently gone slinking off to fester with gangrenous, salmonella ridden wounds at the bottom of a dumpster filled with rotten diapers and sour milk.  Why so many gross words?  Because nothing smells like anything I've ever smelled before.  Now I sit around composing daisy chains of near comparisons to explain what is happening to me.   I imagine harum scarum recipes for this witch's brew of stink:  eye of newt, hair from the underbelly of a gryphon, toenail excretion from a raptor, oh and a pinch of truffle oil.   I’ve been feeling similar but different to the times when I was pregnant  and every smell was magnified to an exponential degree.  Some  of you know about this phenomenon: those times when you could smell the spaghetti breath of the man across the church at nine o'clock in the morning?  Like that.  But different because I don't recognize the exact smells I'm smelling.  They're wrong, slightly off, sometimes way off.  Coffee smells like the body odor of a person who drank an "I've made a huge mistake" amount of coffee and is now having a panic attack, add a daub of eau de skunk roadkill behind each of his fibrillating ears. Garlic smells like the breath of someone who indulged in a delicious Korean fried chicken meal the night before, drank alternating shots of sake and bourbon all night, vomited and then forgot to brush her teeth the next morning, gargling only with yesterday’s  coffee. Toothpaste tastes like rancid self-tanning lotion left in the back of the bathroom cabinet since the late 1990s when it was last used.  The closest I've come to a similar experience was when I was pregnant and living above a couple who cooked with many heavy spices I was not familiar with and as the strange, intense aromas invaded our apartment into my morning sickness, all I could think was, "This must be what hell smells like."

And all these descriptions are only for my own benefit because nobody can understand what's going on inside my nasal passages and therefore inside my head. Trying to explain to an outsider is an exercise in frustration.  But describing it to myself is useful because, indeed, sometimes I do feel as if I am in the throes of a fever-dream induced by psychedelic mushroom ingestion.  Nothing is quite right, nothing is the kind of real I'm completely familiar with.  I'm like Alice down the rabbit hole which has turned out to be the tunnel of a star nosed mole: at first disorienting, frightening and alienating and then it morphs into a nightmare. So describing it gives me a touchstone, a reference point that says,  "yes, I do know what garlic vomit that hasn't been washed by a toothbrush smells like”.

  My daughter Sabine has been a Parosmic ( yes I made that up) much  longer than I.  Mine began October 8 2021, I know the exact day because I sent my family a text saying "this chocolate coffee tastes disgusting- definitely won't try again."  Little did I know that it was the beginning of a much longer journey down dark and lonely byways.   Sabine has been plagued for probably a year longer.  And I must confess I could not understand what she was going through before it happened to me.  I was actually a little jealous of her being so skinny (that’s an unhealthy body image subject for another day). Now I understand a little better and my heart hurts for the isolation she has been experiencing for some time. In a tiny way we can form a  support group of two in that we each know that the other is a real person, having a tangible (smellable?) and similar experience.    We have, in common,  a sense of alienation, not only the  loss of  community in just sitting around a dinner table enjoying company and good food but this gaping vacuum around each of us created by the loss of shared experience.  "Why aren't you eating?', same reason as last night and the night before that and …. “I would never have that kind of willpower",  ITS NOT WILLPOWER ITS TORTURE!  And you definitely would have all the “willpower” in the world if your food smelled like horse's ass. "How much weight have you lost? I wish I could get that diet"  well actually I haven't lost a pound because I'm eating loaves of bread and butter daily and candy by the fistful in order to self-soothe....and I wish you could get this diet too.  Not really, but kind of.

So what is even the point of writing about it?  I'm not sure.  I might have to walk away from the computer and think about the things I could or should be learning from this helpless experience, or from writing about it  or from trying to discuss it with those who love me or those who might need some support themselves.  I missed the lilacs this year, I missed the wisteria....writing that just makes me want to cry.   For two months I missed bread until we discovered that freshly baked sourdough was edible and delicious.  I missed pizza like a wild woman until I found another source that makes garlic free sauce and if I eat three small pieces when they're hot enough to make burn bubbles on the roof of my mouth then I get to have some pizza once  a week.  I missed using my new Nespresso machine that we bought for its evocative coffee smell that reminded us of sneaky boutique hotel getaways.  Months later, I've reached the point where I can have one small shot of espresso quickly enough to savor the old taste and smell, down and done before the lingering nag of skunk and truffle oil can grab hold of my olfactory scruff and shake a gag out of me.  I am wildly appreciative of the steps I've taken forward: the bread, the pizza, the coffee.  I am wildly disappointed every time I try to make something I once loved, like tacos, and it just stinks like pig innards being boiled in truffle oil (yes truffle oil is a theme and I am not a fan).  I am heartbroken by the loss of smells I love for the sake of smelling: flowers, lemons, my husband, my kids, fresh cut grass.  What's the lesson? Appreciate what you have when you have it?  Appreciate the progress I have made since October 8?  Be grateful that all that is wrong with me is this Parosmia thing because other people are going through something much more difficult?  Be more patient and understanding with people who have obstacles that are troubling their life?  Eat all the steak you can get your hands on because there may come a day when you never eat meat again?

Weirdly, what has been singing through my mind as I take a lap and think about the consequences of Parosmia  is a song we used to sing at Mary Immaculate, the little yellow church in my home town.  "Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace."  The part that keeps coming to my mind is this:

      "Oh Master grant that I may never seek 

   so much to be consoled as to console

To be understood as to understand

         To be loved as to love with all my soul.

What does this mean?  Well, the song is supposed to be the prayer of St Francis of Assisi.  Reflected in the lines is not necessarily what he, or I in singing it, have already achieved but what we would like to see in ourselves  as the outcome of some growth.  We, me and Francis, are asking God to empower us to be more understanding, consoling and loving, within the confines of our ability, through our trials both great and small.  Maybe I can help my daughter negotiate this situation better in having a deeper understanding of her struggle.  Maybe I can be more mindful of praying for my friend who has been fighting liver cancer with tenacious endurance and grace.  Maybe I can be grateful for every small kindness that is extended to me through a crust of bread.  And if I do catch a whiff of  an old fragrance, maybe I will be attentive and  ready to stop, drink it in,  full of gratitude and grace for the small favors that come my way.

                            

 

Song of Creation

 We were driving out of the Home Depot parking lot when Ed Sheeran's "Bad Habits" came on the radio.  Love.  The sun was shining, the bed of the truck was full of 16 foot lengths of cedar shiplap for a bathroom reno, jams were blasting out of the speakers: endorphins galore.  Then an interesting thing happened.  Luis was singing the techno countermelody of the song and my mind began to think its thinks.  I did not stop singing at the top of my lungs and clapping and really hitting my falsetto but inside I was absorbing how much I enjoyed Luis chosen part of the song.  Usually my brain focuses on the hard driving, neck snapping beat and the melody.  But as I basked in  the countermelody delivered by my husband, I thought, "Isn't that interesting, I love that part but I would never sing it and I almost don't even hear it until he brings it forward.  There's my boy alternately singing and whistling this funky countermelody because that's what he hears first."  

Of course because I'm an inherent exaggerator, I must make a mountain out of this molehill. Honestly, the idea crystallized fully formed into my mind without effort:  this is exactly how our  life together has been.  I'm not saying Luis sings the countermelody to my melody on a permanent basis. It's not a question of one person singing the lead and the other doo-wopping in the background, he hears and sees things in a different way and from a different perspective than I do.  He has brought to our equation thinks I'd never thunk before:  Spanish, Peru, innate kicking against the goads, wild independence, calm fidelity.  These are the obvious but there have been a million revelations over our time, just like that countermelody.  The interesting thing is, I come from this family of big, aggressive, competitive,  loud and many children.  "Loudest and longest" is a bit of a motto and joke referring to which of us can sing the most obtrusively, even (or especially) at church or a funeral.  So probably when I met Luis I  was not in the habit of singing the countermelody to someone else's song.  Indeed, I was gonna sing my own song at the top of my lungs; get on board or get drowned out.   Somehow and somewhere,  our song has expanded and retracted, pushed and pulled and developed into a interesting and very surprising duet:  sometimes he sings the melody, sometimes I, sometimes one or the other of us is the audience to the others' solo.  In sum, I  feel rather lucky because I LOVE a duet.  

My sisters and I have talked about this song and were each separately hurt and bowled over by a line from Selena Gomez' "Lose You To Love Me": 

         "Sang off key in my chorus 'cuz it wasn't yours." 

Choke.  I can't.  It hurts me in the somewhere unknown center of my soul to imagine someone  purposefully ruining another's song.  Don't get me wrong, intentional off-tune harmonies can be hilarious if everyone's in on the joke. Try it sometime with The Three Little Pigs’ jaunty rendition of  “Who’s  Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?!”  Endless  hilarity- tra la la la laaaaa. A different thing is a malicious neglect or self-centered lack of care for someone else's song.    What if I do it to another?  I've seen it and it is devastating. Thanks to my mother who loved music enough to doggedly share it with her kids, I had, at least, a few good harmonies in my repertoire.  I can still picture her strained face while she lifted her eyebrows and finger to show me exactly where the note was that I was missing. "No, here" and then she'd sing the note for me.  Unfortunately I probably used the tool as a battering ram to sing the harmony louder (and longer) than the one singing the melody.  But still.  I loved to harmonize with my mother.  She, having aged past self-centered youth, having been a mother for many years had learned the humility and nuance of being the audience, the music teacher, the encourager, the doo -wopper  and so we sang together all the time.  She invited me to enter the song and even let me take over.  This is an amazing gift that she gave to all of her children. Each of us has separate or shared memories that can be referenced in song, either from the radio, from church, from my mom making a song out of anything and inviting everybody into the party. 

 I have one particular memory that encapsulates how shared music worked in our family:  My brother had just died and we were all wallowing in the endless  mire of depression and sorrow and darkness.  A friend came over for a condolence visit.  He was probably 21 at the time and not many of my contemporaries could wrap their minds around condolence.  His mother was dying with brain cancer so he got it and made an heroic effort to show up.  There we were, up in our living room and for some reason we started singing "The Sound of Music"  (probably because we thought we were the poor man's family Von Trapp).  My friend Marc suddenly pipes in with the most beautiful angelic "aaaaaaaah" .... you know the part.  It makes me tear up even today remembering him entering into our song of sorrow and celebration of my brother Ben with his ethereal countermelody.  I will never forget.  Another funeral related incident hearkens to the time of my father's death.  My son Miguel came to be with me in Maine at my Dad's funeral.  We the siblings hauled out our showiest, loudest, longest notes and harmonies to honour ( yes there is a u in there to make the honour absolute) our father.  This man who could sing "Terror of the Gibbet" at haute voice from the shower would not be memorialized with any less than our full vigour ( yes u).  Afterward Miguel stared at me wide-eyed shaking with suppressed mirth and surprise.  "That could have been in a movie- that's the only way I can describe it."  I chuckled knowingly, because indeed the movie "Loudest and Longest" would be a wonderful homage to our sibling bonding and struggle...at a funeral.  And even though song could be raised to the level of blood sport in my family, it has always been a source of solace and wonder and expression of things our hearts needed to say but couldn't.  

At some point I began to understand that all of creation was God's song to us and that we had been and were constantly being invited to join in this song. What does that mean?  Let me stop backstroking down the river memory and allow the slipstream to catch me, arms akimbo, hair floating, backward to the place I need to go.  When I was in fourth grade I had this teacher who was magnificent to behold.  She was probably 6 ft 2.  I could be exaggerating (as I do) because who knows how tall adults are when you're in the fourth grade? She has a black beehive that added another 6 inches. Her eyes were usually shadowed in an iridescent green or blue with the wings of Madame Butterfly outlined in sharp black.  She wore brightly colored floral pattern dresses that left the impression that an armoire and a chintz couch had had a baby and she was the living product.  Substantial, impressive.....terrifying.  On the first day of fourth grade, I walked into the classroom, took one look at her and forgot to read the things she had written of the blackboard.  This was  unfortunate because the instruction were:  go to the back table,  pick your name card, choose your own desk, put your name card on your chosen desk.  I think today I could be diagnosed with social anxiety so new situations got me all out of whack and my gingery essence turned me into a flaming face of horrified shame.  Back in 1978, I was just told " stop crossing your arms and try to smile at people".  So I walked into Mrs. Modica's classroom, saw her, uncrossed my arms, gave her the weakest of smiles, went to the back table and promptly plopped myself down on the chair in front of my name card, at the back table, ears ringing.  At some point my teacher released me from the prison of my making and let me choose my own desk.  She didn't even hold my awkwardness against me.  Later in the year, I remember reading through the Chronicles of Narnia and coming to her desk to give an oral book report.  I was so enraptured by the idea that I had discovered a secret story within the story that I very enthusiastically told her about The Lion in “The Magicians Nephew” singing the world into being...and I think C S Lewis meant that it was like God creating the world.....and do you think that perhaps God sang the world into being or is that just what the author thought?  She listened avidly as if I had just discovered literature, metaphor and allegory single handedly.  Kind lady.  Next year I  fell into 5th grade with a new level of confidence and comfort with another wonderful teacher Mrs. Anthony.  She gave me the book "A Wrinkle In Time."  In it, I remember the stars singing with the joy of creation.  I would not say I had a fully formed idea of what all this meant (in fact I still don't) but it opened me up to the depth and breadth of what music could mean to my life, to others, in communication, in creation....oh the possibilities.

Then suddenly I was a mother and it was my turn to teach the harmonies, and melodies and countermelodies and to be the audience. I wanted to invite my children into the world of music, the song of Creation.  I wanted them to experience the ineffable that can only be conveyed through music and the joining in.  I was about to critique my efforts in this area but I will refrain because I'm trying to give myself room for kindness and growth.  The story isn't over yet.  I have been contemplating recently (the past 20ish years)  the idea of all of our actions being our part that enters into the song of Creation:  raising kids, washing dishes, driving kids all over creation, gardening, cooking, singing, writing, kissing, hugging, smiling, screaming, giving birth, crying, mourning, fighting, painting, folding clothes.  Some parts are discordant, trite, boring, repetitive, dissonant.  But sometimes, the harmony is so pure, the countermelody so true, the baseline so heart thumpingly good that one feels they've slipped the bonds of gravity, complacency and drudgery, so entering the ethereal yet earthly space that is the song of creation.  Here the invitation to join has been accepted and 

                            "You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;

                                the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you

                                   and all the trees of the field will clap their hands"

The distillation of this happens, sometimes, in the parking lot of Home Depot.

Truckulescence.

So, Luis and I were sitting in the um..... let's say hot tub, for the sake of our gentle reader, having a chat about the week. Don't get me wrong, Luis (West Coast call sign Miguel) is my husband of thirty years so if I were sitting in the bath with him that would be fine. But in deference to my nonexistent public and knowing that I have a horrifyingly vivid imagination about other people and many times have wished for an "Abracadabra! Image be gone!" incantation for my own delicate mind, I will say hot tub. Side note, thanks to Dua Lipa I am trying to implement Sugarboo as the answer to the east coast/west coast duality of my husband but my inner mean girl keeps trying to stop me from making it happen. Imagine if the bathtub is a stumbling block, what Sugarboo would be for real people who have to be subjected to my nonsense. Stay tuned for developments on that front.

 Digressions aside, we were having this chat. Luis was telling me about the trials and tribulations of the trucking industry and how in particular the independent trucker just gets no respect. He recounted how one of the drivers went into the port, spent the entire day in line to pick up a container and at the end of said endless day was turned away with nothing. This is not a new story, it happens every day but sometimes he just needs to vent. There are many players involved: steam ship lines, the ports themselves, unions, China, Covid, politics and I am not here to untangle that Gordian Knot for this story. My takeaway is my husband's sense of powerlessness in the equation and how the trucker is the last one to receive consideration. So I said, "Oh I've been thinking of this balance of power thing a lot but in terms of a woman who chose to forego working in the marketplace as a valuable commodity in order to exclusively raise children and do all the things that are neccessary within a household to make it run smoothly and economically. You, as a trucking company have no......ARGH what is that word again? You know, it means power, a valued commodity in an accepted marketplace, 'hand' if you're quoting George Costanza. I can't think of the word again. But you don't have it."

 Later I texted my phone-a-friend siblings. Particularly I wanted to ask my sister Wendy what was the word that I had forgotten when she was visiting me. Apparently I have so little of it I can never remember the word, this is the fifth time I've tried to recapture it. I described what I meant and while I was waiting for Wendy to respond, my ever helpful brother Tommy guessed "Truckulescence?!" Yes! What a fantastic made up word. That is exactly what Luis and I, in different contexts, lack in this world. Later, Wendy texted back "agency." Yes that is the word I was looking for before I met truckulescence. The reason I was trying so furiously to remember the word was because I was having an inner debate/ presentation/ argument/brawl about whether it would be possible to enter a marketplace in a meaningful way at the age of 53 when my last gainful employment was as a waitress on the other side of the country while I was in college. Why was I even having this inner struggle? There are number of factors that speak to my constant disquisition: I was raised in a home where it was considered my rightful and correct place as a woman to, if I married, have many babies and raise them and take care of the home. Simultaneously I was pretty smart and a pretty good athlete and was expected to excel at all things in "the world" until such a time that I would be expected to retreat into the submissive enclave of being a wife and mother. This is embarrassing to write and impossible to convey because it is the speak of near cult-like unbending dogma. Still, as it applied to me, I was fully on board with the idea of devoting my energy to raising my children and making my household a thriving operation.

 But entering into a contract with another human being where you relinquish all your worldly power is a very delicate interaction and you better trust the hell out of your partner. One time when I was 17, my mother and father got into an argument. Dowd fight caveat, this is a nasty frenzied escalating duel of coming up with the cruelest thing you can imagine saying to the other person and then saying it. So when my father told my mother "You don't contribute one iota to the value of this family" it was probably par for a vicious fight and perhaps he really didn't mean it. But I couldn't stand it. I told my mom " I will never get married, definitely never leave myself vulnerable to the person who is supposed to love me most telling me I have no value." I am not going to list the things that made my mother valuable because its insulting to even have to delineate how and why she was of value but needless to say, she was of paramount value in my life. The pulling out of the rug beneath her feet, to me, was unbearable. My mother made my father apologize to her in front of me and then to me for making me think that the marriage relationship was untenable. But I never forgot the hurt of that on her behalf but also on my own behalf if I was ever going to enter into a similar power contract. 

 Fast forward thirty years I and five of my sisters all entered into a version of this contract. For a variety of reasons four of my sisters have had to re enter the marketplace as an earner in her household, if not the sole earner in her household. As I stand witness to each of their lives, I am in awe. Abigail was already the primary earner and then became the sole parent when she was widowed. She just marched on with the stubborn determination and particular brand of grace that is Abigail. Jessica, finally escaping a toxic husband, had to restart her career after a ten year hiatus. But she reinvented herself and is a thriving businesswoman, crushing the doubts and hurdling obstacles like Gal Gadot in Wonder Wonan ( first one because boy was 1984 terrible). Wendy has more recently had to examine her options. After raising her four boys, including homeschooling which I think deserves some kind of battle prize, she was rewarded with unfaithfulness right in her face. She chose to not accept the new terms and moved on from the original contract. But after 25 years off the market, it is a seemingly insurmountable slog to find a way to support yourself and the children impacted by this sea change. She has humbly taken on several jobs as the lowest man on the ladder and recently started to work as part of a flight crew for an airline. She's actually killing it, newly energized and starting an exciting adventure at the age of 56. Somehow she was able to find a new version of the old Wendy, my erstwhile pre-teen hero. I am amazed by each of these women, for their resilience, for their bravery, for their ability to overcome what I consider a breach of contract. For taking back their agency. I still have none. 

 To be fair, I completely do in the context of my relationship with my husband. Never once has he given me to believe that I haven't been pulling my share of the weight. But I always have creeping doubts, a mental spreadsheet of the value of cooking, cleaning, gardening. Ick I don't even like to type out the various things I do all day because I feel like I'm answering that jackass who asks "What do you do all day?" 'None of your business what do YOU do all day?" Especially now that the children are grown I have no excuse for not trying to find a job but the only thing I am currently qualified to do would probably only make our income just enough to cause us to pay more taxes. And so the internal tumult goes on until I silence it with self justifications according to my own scale of importance and value. So, indeed I am so lucky that my only judge is me, my only boss is me because once I shut me up, I have no one to answer to. 

 I think my daughters would like to be full time mothers if they ever have children but I always try to encourage them to seek a gainful employment that they can hold on to, possibly pause but keep a hand in while they are in the trenches of mothering. Why? Because of what I've seen in my sisters' life, even my mothers' life. It is such a precarious situation to put oneself in. I think my husband is a unicorn. Why was he willing to enter into this contract and abide by it faithfully all these years? Why did he not take advantage of my loss of agency? I think part of it is he understands the loss of agency. When he was 22, the medical school he was attending was shut down for political reasons, leaving him with no record of the past three years of education. He packed his bags and moved to the United States and started all over again. In moving he lost a comfortable place in society, had to start undergraduate school all over, loss of comfortable home, loss of familial and societal support. In other words, he relinquished all his agency and started over from scratch. Having thought he would be on his way to being a surgeon, he started again as a gas station attendant and never thought it beneath him. When he arrived here he was frequently considered a second class citizen for the first time in his life. He was undeterred by the experience, comfortable in the knowledge of who he was. For the years I have spent with him he was been wildly even-keeled in the light of my emotionality but also in the face of a lot of shit he's been given. And you know what? He is never the sum of the shit that someone tries to shovel at him. That is not me, he says and moves on. I do admire him. He relinquished his agency and yet is so truckulescent. 

In light of Easter I know another Who is also familiar with the relinquishing of agency. 

 Here is the description :

 "Who Being in very nature God. did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage: rather He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient unto death- even death on the cross." 

 This is amazing to contemplate especially as I barter and trade for every piece of emotional value I can give myself. 

 And even so, He calls to me 

 "Meghan, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

 Now this is a contract I can enter into gladly and full of trust. And suddenly in this, I have agency again. I can quiet my inner brawl because I am full of truckulescence, thanks to Jesus. And my Sugarboo.

Somewhere Along the Yellowbrick Road

I lost my courage. Picture this: newly coiffed mane, pin curls framing and bow precious and precarious above my snarfling face, dabbing tears from my crying eyes with my tail. (I would insert a picture of the Cowardly Lion but I've forgotten how) Yes, that's me. Its 4:24 AM and I've been up with my cast of character thoughts since 2:47. What happened? My sister texted me yesterday morning to say she had run across my son Antonio's song "I Did" on her ITunes playlist. It's a great song: catchy, clappy, tells a long story the short way round. My brother Tom, from parts unknown, doing duty as an Army Dr. asked, "What song, tell me about it." So, I tried to share the song but apparently it's a true, You Had To Be There situation. At the time when Antonio first proffered it, Jessica and I downloaded but it's really hard to find now, if at all possible. Brainstorm, I started looking back through the archives of Night of Grace, my erstwhile Salon Des Arts, now defunct repository of thoughts from a decade ago. Three hours later I have not found a copy of "I Did" but I am wiping my face with my cowardly tail wondering what happened to this brave girl (forty year old) who was willing to share her words and launch them into the open space of the internet.

 I start listing my reasonable explanations for why I abandoned this practice. I stopped liking social media; it turned out not to be the forum for creativity and interesting discussion I thought it would be when I joined up. First I had to quit Instagram for fear that I would outbully my children's bullies. Then I realized that Twitter wasn't the healthiest place for me as it seemed to be the ultimate "rank out session" as we used to call it on Long Island in my ever growing more distant youth. I don't need the opportunity to be a jerk in 140 characters (yes I quit back then), that's a gauntlet I will take up and slap everyone with, to my chagrine. By the time Tik Tok came around I was safely sheltered away from the fallout from two political elections and opinions that I could never bear to hear or share because I don't agree with anybody's opinion, ever. I don't even agree with my opinion from yesterday but I'm always ready to get into a fight over it, arms swinging wildly because I have so little self control. 

 So why not use social media as a tool for my desired goals instead of letting it dictate to me? Why not socialize nicely with old friends and family, share my thoughts, or just keep them in an archive I could access some day? Have you ever heard the expression "she threw out the baby with the bathwater"? That's my move. I threw out the bathwater and the baby with it and then finally threw out the bathtub. I come by this behavior honestly. My mom, when unable to control her own and her children's addiction to television with a level headed schedule that everyone would abide by, put the TV out to the curb on garbage day. Fair enough, I was always sneaking it behind her back. When Christmas materialism became too much and my mom was sick and tired of our greedy lack of gratitude, she threw the Christmas tree, lights and all, straight out the second story living room window. It was a grandiose gesture, worth the retelling over the years. Sadly we missed out on the opportunity for a more meaningful, simplified Christmas because we just could not control ourselves. Add to this that our family could take a decision like this and parlay it into a sort of dogma. Religious, moral, rule bound dogma helps to draw a line in the sand. If it's a rule that MUST NOT be broken then nobody has to take a thing and analyze it on a case by case basis. Case by case analysis is a lot of work and takes the wisdom of Solomon. Just cut the baby in half and be done. This poor baby, first thrown out with the bath water and then cut in half. 

 Is this a fair assesment of why I quit writing my words? Possibly. One thing led to another and then to another and I shut down the possibilities for myself to use outlets through social media. Honestly, less and less chronic social media was not a bad thing for me. But as I continue to read my own blogged words, the cowardly lion starts bawling uncontrollably, snot running down that jowly, furry face, choking, snorting. This is ugly. Becuase I have just read the real reason for my retreat. It's tucked into a birthday story for my son Miguel called "Long Journey, Short Time": "For a second, I wanted to, consquences be damned, gather him back into my arms like when he used to let me. I failed to reach out and grab my erstwhile baby because my heart wouldn't have been able to withstand the recoil." I cant even see through the tears as I type out the quote. For quite some time I have been worried about how I've stopped reaching out to hug and touch my kids as adults. Why and where did it happen that the vast crevasse between us opened up? Once upon a time we were Echad, a compound unity, as I held them in my body waiting to be born. I nursed them (horrifying thought for adolescent children), I held them, I taught them, they were my best effort, sometimes my worst. Often I failed them and maybe that's where the spaces grew. Also, there came time for them to grown away from me. This was neccessary and hard. But I was a coward. I was afraid of the recoil. I was afraid of being hurt. So slowly, slowly I touched them less and now I don't know how to start hugging them again, casually being like " Hey, want a hug?" It's awkward to leap out from the shadows and accost them now that I've acknowledged my own lack, my own failure and want to reverse it. We shall see what schemes I devise to rectify this situation. It might be difficult because one is in New York and one in Florida. But these are excuses because two live in my house. Beware children. Be brave Meghan.

 Similar but different is starting to gather the courage to write again. I can't remember how to insert a hyperlink any better than I know how to wrestle my kids back into my arms. It's not that big a risk because I literally have no audience. But I do have this imaginary audience, a monologue, diabologue (read either diabolical monologue, or dialogue with a bo: both make equal nonsense) a decalogue of critics, detractors, second, third and fourth guessers right inside my head rooting me on to failure. But there is nothing to fail, this writing is just a way of remembering my thoughts, making a pile of stones in memorium of the smallest milestones of my life, a way to gather my children, my family, my hopes, my fears into my outstretched arms and hug them to myself and cherish them in my heart. In the words of the song:

         “I could while away the hours, conferring with the flowers, consulting with the rain. With the thoughts I'd be thinkin' I could be another Lincoln (sidebar I don't have to be another Lincoln even though we share a birthday, just the same old Meghan) if I only had a brain..... a heart..... the nerve.”

Parable of the Prodigal Cat

The other night the new family cat didn't come home. Big deal, huh? It was to me. Every time I woke up in the night realizing the cat was still outside in the dark, exposed to the potential dangers of coyotes and raccoons, cold and cars, I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I got up several times to try to call him home, I heard him scream once or twice in the middle of night as if he had been ensnared by something evil. Finally, I prayed that God would send my cat home. Ridiculous. After all, the cat had chosen to stay away. Even though I am one of those people who will talk to God about any and all things on a constant basis, I thought asking for the cat to come home seemed absurd. Really. And then he came home and I was overjoyed. I can't explain it any differently. Overjoyed.

Last week I lost my favorite earring. I wear them almost every day. On one unidentified day, I decided it would be cool to wear my big hoops and stick my little earring in a partially opened second hole: residue from a line of self-inflicted piercings from my college days. Maybe I was feeling old and thought this would young me up a bit. Who knows? By the end of the day that ear was aching and I took the extra earring out. For the life of me I could not remember where I put it. I looked in every cup, every jewelry box, every tray, every knick- knack holder in the house (for those of you who know my penchant for small receptacles-a Hurculean task). Soon, I was pulling the furniture out from the wall, wrestling with giant dust bunnies, emptying out the garbages, taking apart drains, sifting through the laundry and vent registers. For two days, I obsessed over it, even thinking the cat might have eaten it and that I might have to sift through the kitty litter. Again, a seemingly petty incident but, oh so important to me. I rarely care about material things but these particular earrings were given to me on my fortieth birthday by my husband. Somehow they speak to me about the life we've lived together and the love we've shared, so it would be a little sad to lose that. On Sunday I walked down the stairs on my way to get ready to go to yet another soccer game and there, at the foot of the stairs lay, sparkling, my little tourmaline earring. My heart leapt. I kid you not, it leaped right inside of me with joy.

So what? Right? Why write about my petty triumphs? Well, as I contemplated my good fortune I couldn't help but remember Sunday school parables we've all heard so many times we've barely heard them at all. In one portion of the story of Jesus, the "religious" people were challenging him about his penchant for hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors and low-lifes. In response he tells a series of three stories:

1. A man has a hundred sheep and one wanders off. The owner of the lost sheep will leave those 99 to go find the one that is lost. When he finds him, he will carry him home on his shoulders and tell his friends "Rejoice with me, for the one I lost has come home."

2. A woman has ten silver coins but loses one. She lights a lamp and sweeps her entire house until she finds the lost coin. She then calls her friends and says, "Rejoice with me, I have found my lost coin."

3. Jesus finishes with the story of the prodigal son. You know the story, the ungrateful kid takes his inheritance, wastes it on wine, women and song and he ends up eating pig slop. The kid comes to his senses and though he has disavowed his father, he figures he can at least go home and get a job at his father's house: better than being a beggar. While the kid is "still a long way off, the father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; threw his arms around him and kissed him." The father throws a party to celebrate the son that was lost and now is found, once was dead and now is alive.

Sometimes my heart grows dry and hard. I forget. Old parables lose their meaning. I don't have sheep, ten silver coins hold no relevant value to me. Into my husk of a heart, a story speaks specifically to me, featuring a young tabby cat and a single tourmaline earring. All at once, my heart is drenched with a downpour of grateful tears and I remember. So, please, rejoice with me because I have found what was lost.

anniversary ring

Yesterday was my twentieth anniversary and not for nothing but I 'm crazy about my husband. This kind of talk might make you want, at the very least, to pinch me maliciously or cyberpuke all over my facebook status like this: :O~~~~. I'm okay with that. Sometimes a girl has to stand at the top of the highest peak and declare her love and good fortune, in fact it would be downright rude and ungrateful not to.

Anyhoo, what brought me to the blogosphere today was a kismet encounter with an artist's work on the day of my anniversary and I wanted to share her with you.

First, there's a little backstory that I need to lay down. A long time ago, over twenty years to be precise, in a faraway land, Perù to be exact, my fiancé returned to his home country to tell his parents that he was getting married to a girl they had never laid eyes on. Upon his return, he surprised me with a beautiful engagement ring. When he handed me the delicately handcrafted piece, I was shocked. I knew we hadn't any money between us, he just coming out of college and I not even close to being finished. He explained that his grandmother had donated the beautifully burnished 18K Peruvian gold and his mother a baguette from her own engagement ring. I had never heard of recycling gold or imagined a woman I had never even met would give up one of her own engagement stones for me. What was interesting about the ring is that it was so unexpected. Not only because I didn't know he was bringing it but because the style of it was so different than anything I had ever imagined for myself. My mom had a big emerald cut flawless diamond set in platinum from Tiffany's. That was my idea of an engagement ring. This tiny little work of love and art was so different and yet, exactly what I never knew I always wanted. In this, it reminded me of my husband.

Fast forward twenty years, I and my long since lawfully wedded husband are waiting to have a delicious anniversary lunch at Bette's Oceanview Diner as seen on Diner's Drive-ins and Dive's

on Fourth St. in Berkeley when I spot a sidewalk sign advertising gorgeous rings. The sign sends us over to Fifth St to visit the storefront of the artist selling these wares: Melissa Joy Manning.

My words cannot accurately capture the mood of this store and alas, I didn't take any pictures. I was so enthralled by the jewelry and the artistry of the displays that I didn't even think of taking pictures or blogging or anything. Each display case was intricately simple in its appointment: juxtaposing sometimes a ring with the husk of a locust or an organically crafted pair of earrings with the skeleton of a bat. I kid you not. It sounds so odd in print but in situ, the effect was perfectly charming. Immediately my eye fell on a raw diamond ring, the diamond the color of gray sea salt. The extremely solicitous shop assistant let me try it on. We arranged and rearranged the ring to see if it would fit with my engagement ring and matching wedding band. Before I knew it, my husband was purchasing a twentieth year anniversary ring and the new ring fit right in like it had always been intended to join the group, it just needed those twenty years to find its way home.

I am not a woman who needs objects and material goods for gratification. I never even thought I would get an engagement ring much less a twentieth anniversary ring. Still, I do love what it represents: this lovely work of art is a constant little reminder that I have been loved so well and so long by a good man. That is something worth remembering. Thanks to Melissa Joy Manning for helping me remember in such a delightful way.