Remnant #18: On Rereading

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

~Ursula K. Le Guin~

Packing up my house...again. And this means more than the odds & ends & bones & candles & tarot decks & art & photographs...it means more than just the pots & pans & linens & furniture & papers & clothes. If you are me, it means dealing with the most important (and overwhelming) objects--the books. No really. Look:

And that is just some of them, nowhere near all. And that is after bagging up four bags of them to donate. My first move, my brother joked that I could build a house of books. My second, he asked if I was sure I'd really read all of these books. My third, he asked if I really needed to keep all of these books. My fourth, he said he would move everything except my books. I get it. I really do. This latest move I'm in the midst of now, as I started packing up the bookcases and sorting things through, I first felt excited about seeing old books like seeing old friends. I kept saying, "Oh, this was a great book!" and, "I remember when I got this." But, eventually, I started feeling something almost like guilt.

Too many books. Waaaay too many.  They are my escape...my teachers...my comfort. Wherever I am in the world, if I can just get to the bookstore, I am home. Whenever I move, however strange the new house feels, as soon as I unpack them, I am home. But, all but a few of them are short-term pleasures I savor quickly, then stack against the wall or put in the bookcase with all of the others. That is, until now.

While dusting off these spines this past weekend and boxing them up, I decided that it's time to slow down my constant impulse to find new titles to read. There is so much important literature in my library already. So, from today until at least the start of summer in June, I will only be pulling from my current shelves. It's time to reread what I have and remember what I loved about these books and recall the person I was when I first read it versus the person I am now. I may post about it here and there as I move through the experiment, in the spirit of remembering and celebrating the transformative power of books in my life.

  “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”  ~Nabokov~

Remnant #17: Home

I can't stop thinking of leaving. Of roots. Of wandering. Of spending a whole life living in the house I grew up in only to move when I found myself alone for the first time--then to move again & again & again. Six times, now, in seven years. It becomes all about nesting. My things...books, empty nests, bones, art, scraps of wood and furniture pulled from other people's trash, lace, shells, spent blooms, old photos. My belongings matter because I make home happen wherever I end up by surrounding myself with familiar talismans.

I seek out new places. I start over. I throw tarot cards and the Chariot comes and I know I am moving even before the house presents itself to me. I daydream out of windows that aren't mine--decorating bedrooms I'll never sleep in and worrying about dinner parties with friends I fear won't come in kitchens I'll never set foot in. I decide where the bookcases will go. I count the miles for commuting. I imagine running or walking in the area and how it will feel to carry myself across unknown streets. I can picture everything. Except staying.    

Now, I've found my next one to move into next month. Another cape cod. Another red door. Another parkland view. A zip code I never planned to return to. A heart-of-winter move when the whole world looks stark and unforgiving. A heart-of-winter move when it is the perfect time for hibernating inside and starting over again. Then, spring will close in and blunt the edges of the unfamiliar and I will open windows wide. And breathe.

And call it home.        

Remnant #16: On This Day

I used to do a daily 7pm photo series and, on this day, four years ago, this was the image with the words: "Wednesday...7pm...silence." I still remember the moment I took it. I was walking back to my sister's house from my ex's place and wandered into a stranger's yard. A woman came out of the house and said, "The birches are beautiful at night, aren't they?" And, I just nodded, couldn't speak. "You okay, honey?" she asked me. I nodded again and then blurted out, "My mom died today." She put her hand over her mouth and looked at me, shocked--like maybe I was about to unravel in her driveway.

We stood in silence together for a good five minutes, staring up into the birch trees and breathing frosted breaths. I was stunned then. I am still stunned now. "I'm so sorry," the woman finally said. "I am too," I told her, "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She wasn't even sick." I took my photo and waved goodbye to her. She watched me walk away, quiet. I wish I could say this gets easier with every passing year. But, it doesn't. All that has happened is that the numbness and shock has started to wear off and I'm left to finally process it.

Since there is no way of easing my grief, I look for tiny moments of peace instead, like this one on the first day of life without her...where I got to breathe in silence with a stranger and a strand of bonewhite trees.  

Remnant #15: It Changes Everything

“It will be impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.”  
~Cheryl Strayed~

  Four years ago, I shared my last Thanksgiving with my mother. Four years. Four. It was our last family holiday--she was dead two weeks later. Four years. It has been long enough now that people don't think of me as being bereaved anymore. No one asks me if I'm okay, thinking, she's just lost her mother. No one offers to bear some of the weight of my grief, thinking, she needs support. No one knows that I have picked up my phone at least once every *single* day of my life in the last four years to call her, hesitating, taking a deep breath and trying to get back to what I was doing before. I hear things like, "We all bury our parents." or "We are just at that age now." or "It's a normal part of life." or "It's not like you lost her when you were a child, be thankful for that."

Thankful.

  Every cell in my being resists the word. There is no part of me, ever, that will be thankful for any aspect of her death. No matter how many "At least she didn't suffer with an illness"es or "At least your children all knew her"s that people toss out there like kindhearted hand-grenades. No. Thankful is the wrong word. And, selfishly...if an illness meant I would have been even slightly prepared for her death, then I would gladly take it. And, if the same people who say my children were lucky to know my mother could see the grief my children still struggle with, they'd realize just what a mixed blessing that knowing was.

 For me, these last four years have held some moments of true beauty. My children are growing up and holding steady. My family has added a member with my nephew's birth. My own health, which was at its worst right as mom died, has stabilized. I got my MFA in Creative Writing. I moved. I traveled. I have been lucky enough to have laughter, love, friendship, and my fair share of kissing. I've read a million books and written two book manuscripts. I have two cats. I have a good job and teach creative writing to women locally and afar at retreats. I read tarot for myself and for others, which is deeply meaningful to me. I try to embroider things (sloppily) and run miles (slowly). I wake up every day with a roof over my head I've provided for myself. I am thankful--deep to the hollow of my bones--thankful for all that I have. And yet.    

 Gratitude is not as simple as it once was. Every good thing I am blessed enough to experience is now colored by the loss of her. My mother loved me more than anyone on Earth ever could or ever will. I don't know how you live in the absence of that kind of love without feeling the brutal daily ache of it. The grief crashes over me in waves until I am drowning. Yes, I am an adult. Yes, we all will bury our parents. Yes, it is a part of life. But, it was out of nowhere. She was only in her sixties. I wasn't ready. And neither was she.

When Cheryl Strayed's Wild came out I read through it multiple times, hungry for someone's acknowledgement of just how deep a wound motherloss is for some of us. It is a brave book that comes very close to expressing some of what I felt. But then, I found myself jealous that Strayed "got to" go insane when her mother died...got to completely go feral and run away into solitude in the wilderness to cope with the grief. I, on the other hand, still had kids to raise as a single mom. Rent to pay. Work to do. I had to tamp down the wild wolf of suffering in me and get-shit-done. Falling apart was a luxury I couldn't indulge in. I have moments of howling pain even now that level me, but I can only give it a very small, contained space to run in--then I have to take care of things.

 So yes, it is the holiday season again where people express how thankful they are for their blessings. And I count mine, too. I do. But, November right on through until mom's death anniversary just before Christmas is a time of personal reckoning. It is a time I go a little quiet. I go a little dark. I sink a little bit beneath the surface of a vast ocean. Four years later, I am only just starting to come out of the shock of her death. Now, the real work of grieving can begin. Maybe this year I will be able to acknowledge the hard knot of pain in my chest as I try to have my Thanksgiving meal. Maybe when the tree goes up and the ornaments are on it and the rest of the world is singing "Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas," and telling me to smile and "not be a Scrooge," I will be able to say out loud, "You know what? This time of year is hard for me." Because it is. And just because the timeline for others says that it has been long enough for me to be through the respectable, allotted process for grieving, I can accept that it isn't. And I'm not there yet.

 Her loss makes me no less thankful for her life. And her loss makes me no less thankful for my own life. But, it changes everything. I can sit with these contradictions. The brokenness and the beauty. My heart at high tide.    

Remnant #14: Walls

I planned to write here daily in November, instead, I've barely scratched the surface. My journal is bursting with words--I'm slowly typing my manuscript a little bit at a time. But, this is a season of going deep within and my wayward heart alternates between wanting to sing all day for everyone who happens by and an instinct to hide in silence behind heavy walls. Connection and self-protection. Always a delicate balance--especially for me.

Even just with this post, I am walking along the edges of uncertainty--what to express, what to keep to myself. I want to know you. I want to be known. There are many forces that have built me. Loves, betrayals. Wounds, gifts. I'm made up of the great terrible-beautiful that holds together all of our walled-off hearts. May Sarton said, "There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.” Her words are embedded in me--her words say all I cannot.

So, here is my quiet little love song from the inside. Right now, I am embracing the solitude to collect up all of my scattered pieces for the long winter ahead. Right now, I am in here, trying to understand what has really happened and dreaming, creating, and being. Right now, all I can do is breathe and count cracks in the cement and wonder what you're doing out there.