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.”