Stepping Stones

I am a believer that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I look at my life experiences and I see their individual worth, but when I put them all together, I wind up with something that is exponentially more than just the mere accumulation and conglomeration of events. I love the looking back on life, welcoming the realization that what seemed like wrong turns down life's lane or what felt like life's greatest injuries were mere course corrections, necessary fine-tunings to bring me to my current perch.

My life is hallmarked by some definitive moments -- most of the ones that stand out are the ones that brought forth the most exquisite kind of pain -- physical, mental, emotional, psychic, spiritual. Perhaps that is the human condition. Perhaps it is unique to me. But the pain of this life is matched always by the joy, such an expansive, bottomless, whole-body goodness that I'm not sure I even possess the words to describe it. I have come to believe that we don't get to experience one without the other -- joy and pain are life's inside-out twins. I have also come to believe that to the degree I experience one, is the degree I am able to experience the other. The deeper the pain, the deeper the joy. Or vice versa.

Last week was one of those divine life moments where the two -- the pain and the joy -- coexisted. Side-by-side. Instead of bickering and misbehaving like usual, the pain and the joy sat quietly. And tearfully.

For years now -- seven to be exact -- we've traveled a few towns over five days a week, 180 days a year -- to a little school nestled in an apple orchard. My boys have blossomed just like the apples in that seemingly always sunny valley.  It would be hard not to thrive in such a location, surrounded by such natural beauty.  But more importantly, nurtured by the most incredible people.

Every graduation, the 6th graders play this song.  This year -- my third time hearing one of my boys play it -- was full of anticipation and a looming dread.  It never sounds great.  They're 6th graders.  New.  But this year, it sounded, to me, magical.  

My graduate chose to sport bright blue skinny shorts and high top Converse to his graduation.  He's spunky and feisty, but soft on the inside.  He's punk to his core.  Although he doesn't know this yet.  It delights me to see him developing in spite of himself...watching his strengths surface, observing his passions, witnessing his struggles.  He's the one I always labeled a firecracker.  He still is.  One hundred percent.  All the time.  Explosive in his activity, his love for friends, his dramatic failures, his crushing defeats, his profound disbelief in his abilities.  He's all-in, whatever he's doing -- even being half-committed.  He's all-in, in a half-committed way, too. 

I'm not sure what kind of thank you note is appropriate to an institution that allowed life to flourish.  That insisted on enjoyment.  That ushered in the birth of beings -- human beings -- rather than human doings.  I'm not sure, on a personal level, how to ever thank the people and a place for providing the framework of family when our family fell apart.  I'm not sure how to thank the men of the school -- the world's best teacher, the most gentle and firm of principals, the dads who showed up in gratitude and enthusiasm in their roles as dads and helpers.  These men have taught my boys lessons words can't capture.  They've lived as good examples, which is more powerful than any book learning ever could be.

It was the time of our lives.  Of this, I am certain. 

And for my punk rocker at heart...his way of coping, the way he chose to usher in the next chapter of his adventure -- well, it sounded like this.  

I've never been so proud.

Letting Go

People have asked me about this blog -- what it's like to write it, why I'm so sporadic, how much I edit.  I can honestly say the most difficult part of writing this blog is the repackaging of my life in a way that protects my (and my boys') privacy while also maintaining the flavor of what our lives are all about.  It's a fine line.  I cherish my anonymity, my space, the safety of a life unknown.  So it takes time for me -- sometimes a few weeks -- to come up with the right words to express something without revealing too much of me.  I'm sure this is what separates really successful expose bloggers from largely unread bloggers like myself.  But when the right words come that express the events, the feelings, the realizations I let them flow.  I'm writing all the time in my head.  Rewriting all the time.  I'm prone to errors and mistakes.  I make typos.  I redo.  I undo.  I do over.  It's not much, but it's me.


So in that spirit, I offer this.  It's difficult at best to speak about the shifting nature of my foundation right now. But I'll try.

Good-byes are not my strong suit.  I hold on.  I'll admit I oftentimes hold on long after I should have let go.  I'm saying good-bye to a phase of my life, and welcoming in a new chapter.  As the seasons change, so too does life.  So it was not surprising to me that the other day, in my life's travels, out in the middle of nowhere, I happened upon a message from the Universe to remind me that some letting go was in order.  It was no penny.  It looked like this:

Oftentimes I feel unprepared for what life is asking of me.  Quite honestly, it seems like the people around me know something I don't.  Perhaps they've read some sort of manual or life's question answer book.  I particularly feel like this when I realize my kids believe that I know something they don't.  They see me as the leader of this pack, the head of this house.  I act as if.  But inside all I can think is that surely there's someone else more qualified for this position.  They have no idea that I know less every day.  They have no idea I'm as uncertain as they are.  Especially in the good-bye department.


But my find the other day reminded me not only that letting go is part of life and necessary, but also that I have the tools to do it, and do it gracefully.


I said good-bye to all my boys this week.  I cried every day until they left.  The thought of being without them seemed overwhelming and distasteful.  It was something I wouldn't really choose for myself.  But I didn't choose it for me.  I chose it for them.  I tried to plan ahead, fill my days down to the minute so I would be busy and accounted for, stay out of trouble and get things done for a change.  


What's interesting to me is what's happened since they've departed.  It's interesting to look at what I've chosen for myself in the absence of others.  Most notably, silence and solitude.  Every day I think, I'll put a movie on.  Every day, I somehow fail to.  I think about listening to music.  I try.  I turn it off.  I think about tackling the to do list.  I sit in silence instead.  The dishes are still in the sink, the laundry's still not put away, the beds still dressed in questionable linens.  


I've loved running this week.  There is such a difference to my stride when I'm not haunted by what I've left behind or frightened of what I might find on my return.  I've added in biking, just because I have the extra time.  I even tackled this hill again with surprising ease.  What seemed an enemy just a few months back, now appears to be a friend.  Where I was weak, I have grown strong.  Where I have surrendered, I have gained.


Much of running for me is the internal conversation -- debate, really -- between my head, my heart, and my body.  My head believes in quitting before I even start.  My heart is anxious to get started.  My body resists the efforts I put forth.  But running that trail, biking those miles, climbing to the top of my favorite hill -- well, it's a commitment and a surrender all in the same second.  I let go of the voice that tells me I'm no good, I look ridiculous, I can't do it.  I grab on to the silence, to the next step, to the sound and feel of my own breath.  


The good-byes these past few weeks have been life-changing good-byes.  The kind of good-byes that are definitive when you look back on your life.  The ones where you say to yourself, "And that is the day my life went this way instead of that.  Right there.  That day.  That minute."  They're profound good-byes.  Good-byes to abilities, capabilities.  Good-byes to homes away from home and people who've become family to us.  Good-byes to a time and way of life that, for years, has felt steadfast and sure, and is now my history, our history, the past.  


All I know is what the song says, I feel it all. 

From the Archives

I wrote this in November of 2009...I remember the day like it was yesterday.  I bet the mom, whose birth I missed by minutes, remembers that day, too.

I am a student midwife apprenticing with a midwife in my community. Recently, she asked me to begin documenting the births I attend in whatever way seemed most appropriate. A few days after she made this request, she called in the middle of the night to let me know one of our moms was in labor.  I knew intuitively that I would miss the birth. My mind wondered why I shouldn’t go back to bed, save the gas, and the energy. But my intuition told me to go forward. In the end, I might have missed the birth, but I think I found the lesson.

How Birth Is Like A Country Road

It occurred to me today that there are a life's lessons in the travel to a birth. We are often misguided in the notion that the birth is the event we are attending to. We fail to realize it's actually the moment that will be our teacher. 

So country roads, damn country roads. Never fails. There they are. They look so different in the dark, dark night.  Even if you've traveled them numerous times in the daylight, their night life is like a long lost identical twin -- the exact same, but totally different. 

I think childbirth classes are like the general driving directions: cross streets, landmarks, things you'll pass along the way, the signs that will point your direction.  Your mother's story, your best friend's birth, the story of the mother of the brother of the sister of your co-worker's neighbor are just the same: merely guideposts along the way.  When you see the stop sign, stop; the yield sign, yield.  Markers, posts, landmarks. 

But here's the thing: in the cold, dark night on a country road, you can't necessarily see the things that people have pointed out to you to guide your way. Your field of vision is limited to the spray of light shed by your car's headlights. Even when they are turned to bright, it's not necessarily any more illuminating. There's more glare and perhaps more peripheral vision, but not really any more sense of what lies further beyond. 

No, on a country road in the dark, at some point you realize that the only information to see you through is the few feet in front of your car as you travel forward.  In a somewhat meditative process, the music that seemed to be your friend on the journey is quieted so you can focus more on the road ahead, the next contraction. Just as much as you need to know, need to see is available -- a gentle hand, a warming word, silence.  That's what we get and that's what we give -- just enough for the now. 

The potholes always catch you by surprise, even when you're ready for them. There is something about the way the light plays on the landscape that makes us incapable of perceiving every pitfall in our path. It's only as we survey our trip in retrospect that we think, "And then I hit that hole right near the sycamore.  Remember it's there on the way back through next time."

Along the road, somewhat lost, not able to rely on our usual senses we find that our sight and hearing have been supplanted by that internal sense of direction.  We may continue to reach out the way we know how -- phone, knock on a door ("Can you help me? I'm looking for a certain house."), perhaps even a co-pilot. Invariably, there is only one person able to put foot on gas pedal, hands on steering wheel, eyes on road. Only one person who will birth that baby. Invariably, the cell phone connection will be lost; the kind neighbor will give inadequate directions; the co-pilot will remain 16 inches away in her own seat. It's a singular journey.

At some point, when all else is exhausted, there comes a time when the only way down the road is...well, down the road. A surrender is made.  "I feel really lost. I'm not sure this is the way. I've done the best I know how. I can only keep going. What other choice do I have? Stop and wait for daylight? A rescue?" 

And in that minute there is no more noise, no more second-guessing, no more wondering if you took a wrong turn. There is only intent mindfulness on the next indicated action, movement, lurch forward. Commitment. What falls away is the belief that there is only one way down the road, to the house. What becomes apparent and entire is that right there -- in that moment, at that time, hands on wheel, foot on pedal, eyes closed -- is that we're moving toward something.  We are going somewhere. 

I believe there is a second time when along the road we submit to the minute. We say to ourselves, "I'll do whatever it takes to keep going forward." We say it to ourselves in a way that doesn't even sound like speaking. It is an intense, full-bodied knowing and display that we will go, we will do, we will be whatever and wherever we need to make progress. Squatting, walking, rocking, crying, silent, rhythmic.

That last effort or instinct on our part, in my experience, is most often met by the surprise find of the exact house you were looking for. It's like in a split second you see the house, think to yourself, "There's a house," then wonder what in the heck a house it doing way out here, and then remember that that's where you were headed in the first place -- exactly like the first time a mother touches her baby's head as it is emerging. That connection is complete.

Opening the door, walking the walkway and crossing the threshold -- you're finally there. You have arrived. In that minute, you have arrived at the destination. The pieces are finally in place and the jigsaw that was the reality of just a minute prior now fuses to make a perfect picture. Baby on belly. 

But here's the thing I love the most about the drive and about the road. The birth will take time, the labor, the welcoming, the checking, the mothering, the cleaning -- and then you'll get back in your car. It will be light; hours will have passed. 

You'll back your car down the road and start for home, but what you'll see is that the entire landscape has changed. Your vision is no longer limited to the destination. Your eyes will no longer be riveted on the few feet in front of the car. What will happen is you'll raise up your head and witness the trees, their colors and their leaves in the wind.  You'll realize you are nestled in a valley or on a hilltop, not just at the end of the road. There will be endless heavens above and fields around, the animals and plants will be coming alive with the heat of the sun. And there is it is: life all around, inside, outside, throughout you and everything, everyone. Motherhood everywhere. 

And that's what happens. You arrive at the place you think is the destination, and once there, you finally see that there is so much more to behold on the journey. 

Self-Defense

I saw you yesterday.  I was thinking about writing you all morning.  I needed to hear your counsel, but then I got quiet enough and heard your voice in my own mind.  And then I realized I didn't need you after all.  You'd already taught me what I needed to know about the situation I found myself in.  

Running couldn't wait yesterday.  For two days in a row, I came upon a minute when I knew I needed to leave the house and be on my way.  The cacophony of ruckus in my own mind was too loud, too continuous, too debilitating.  I needed the quiet and calm that comes from the open road.  The rhythm of the road has a way of knitting me back together in an orderly way, so I can recognize myself again.   

I realized yesterday that in this world there are door-lockers and non-door-lockers.  I'm definitely I'm a non-door-locker by nature.  If I do lock a door, it's a decision.  A conscious decision followed by action.  It's nothing I habitually do.  I don't ever have the sense that I need to protect the things on the other side of the door.  I may protect the people on the other side of the door, but I'm generally not a protector of things.

But here's the thing.  In my life, I'm attracted to the door-lockers.  Like opposite magnetic poles attracted to the door-lockers.  And not just one -- my life is full of door-lockers.  People who take measured steps to ensure their safety and the soundness of the insides of their homes.  I walk around in their lives like an observer at a zoo, seeing how they set up barriers to entry, protect their inner sanctum.  And it's foreign to me.  

I've always thrown my door open, really with reckless abandon.  I welcome in all sorts of people and invite many of them to take up residence inside my very own heart.  For the most part, it's worked out well.  People have come and rearranged my insides, the furniture of my being, with and without my permission, and in the end I was better for having the inner makeover.  People have come in and made my heart their home, and I'm delighted that they've stayed.  Some people, however, do have larcenous souls, and their stays beyond my unlocked doors have proven costly and upsetting, like vandals and thieves.  

I've enjoyed learning from the door-lockers though.  They take steps to care for themselves, offer up the simplest of resistances to unwanted entry.  One of them told me once that safety is no accident.  He was aware of what his end goal was -- safety -- and how to get it -- keep the doors locked.  The simplicity of this idea eludes me.  Just like other simple ideas.  I was in my 20s before I learned that it's easier to keep your room clean than get your room clean.  I was in my last semester of college before I learned the classes were there to be attended, not avoided.  I didn't understand the value of a made bed since it would just be unmade later, until someone told me by that logic, I should never eat again because I'd just be hungry again later, too.  

But the simple ideas of this world are sinking in.  They're growing in their appeal.  It's tough work cleaning up after vandals and thieves.  Door locking might be in order. 

And that's what I heard when I got quiet enough.  I heard you say I shouldn't be surprised at the state of the state because I'd invited it in.  So I went straight home.  And locked my door. 

Triangulation

The transit of Venus this week taught me quite a few lessons.  I learned that in 1716, Sir Edmund Halley tried to measure the distance between Earth and Venus by using the transit.  Captain James Cook was sent to a far off land, Tahiti, which was literally the end of the flat earth at that time.  They surmised that by observing the transit from two separate locations and compiling their data, they would be able to finally put to rest some of the time's greatest questions.  Although in theory their ideas were correct, pesky things like crappy equipment, Venus' shifty outline, and foggy conditions put a damper on their success.  About a hundred years later, after the invention of the still camera, when the transit of Venus happened again, the experiment worked.  


Disclaimer: I am not a historian, mathematician, or astronomer, so if any part of my story is inaccurate, I own it.  Call it literary license.  And please don't rain on my parade by correcting me.  Read on and see why...


There is a phenomenon known as parallax.  It's best demonstrated by extending your hand in front of you with one finger upright, against a definitive backdrop.  Look at your finger against the backdrop with both eyes open.  Then close or cover one eye and see where your finger is in relation to the backdrop.  Then cover the other and see your finger shift positions against the backdrop without your finger moving at all.  You can gain all sorts of information from these measurements -- how far your eyes are from one another, how far to the finger, how far to the backdrop.  At least as I understand it, you can.  In theory.  Although as previously stated, math's not my strong suit, so I'm not sure I could personally figure the true measurements.  


To me these lessons this week were all about the shifting nature of relationships and perspective.  I sat in a room full of people, people I've known for a while, people I've never met, people who have been good friends to me.  I sat there and watched the shifting geometry of souls.  I felt like Halley and his failed experiment.  I could have gauged the distance between bodies, but not the distance of the interior lives of the people in the room.  I knew some married people sat next to each other, but were miles apart.  Other sat apart as strangers although the trappings of their friendship were deep and proven. 


And it was only that second.  Then it shifted.  There were children in the room, growing my the millisecond.  No longer how tall they were yesterday.  We were all growing -- growing older, growing wiser, growing up.  Hopefully, some of us were being reborn -- growing younger, growing more undone, growing in appreciation.


So measurements of bodies can only delineate one aspect of relationship.  It's not an effective means to delve deeper.  


But triangulation can be used in the soft sciences, too.  We can study and learn about many aspects of one subject and see what this holistic approach adds to our knowledge base about a single phenomenon.  It lends to the veracity of theories and outcomes if a subject is double or triple checked this way.  It allows not only greater understanding, but more reliable results. 


And then there's me.  I realized this week, I'm the person who sits with both her eyes open.  And take what I see as being there as it is.  I forget to sit still and close one eye to see the situation from a little different perspective.  I forget to sit still longer and close the other eye to see from even another perspective.  I forget that measuring distances between bodies is only one tool in whole arsenal of life's toolkit.  And I forget the fleeting, almost inconsequential, nature of those measurements.  For today the arrangements of yesterday are a thing of the past.