High Clouds Kill Runner

High Clouds Kill Runner.

I keep imagining this as the headline in the paper when they find my body.  High Clouds Kill Runner.  It's the lesson of this winter so far.  Or one of the lessons anyway.  

I've headed out several times in the last few weeks to run, bundled as much as I can stand -- gloves, beanie, tights, two shirts.  I run for freedom, so being bound up in winter-weather-wear -- well, it's anathema.  

I go out the door and start on my way as the sun is coming up.  The skies are clear.  The morning is coming alive.  It seems full of possibilities.  And then.  High.  Clouds.  All hope of warming temperatures...gone.  The idea of sunny rays penetrating those frigid mornings...gone.  The only thing alive is the reality of miles ahead in the dimmed light of a muted morning.  What was once full of promise turns to something that merely exists.  And what was anticipated -- a run in the sunshine of a new day -- becomes something more like work -- logging miles because miles need to be logged.  I'm sure I'll freeze to death.  Hypothermia.    

So what keeps returning to me is this:  High Clouds Kill Runner.  The haziness of life.  The in-between.  The undefined.  The lack of direction.  The failure to set a sight.  The haphazard wandering.  The absence of a plan.  The point where clear-sightedness succumbs to the high clouds.  Vision suffers.  Energies are spent.  Movement without going anywhere.  Life loses purpose.  Temperatures drop.  The body takes the brunt of the reality, but the spirit and mind are not far behind.  

And then a friend sends this article about searching for happiness versus searching for meaning, and I'm reminded of the value of purpose in one's life.  And I'm again remembering the hazard of high clouds, hazy vision, lack of clear-sightedness.  

I remember reading one of the books referenced in the article -- Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning -- a few years back.  The book was a product of his time as an inmate in a concentration camp in World War II.  It's serious business about the nuts and bolts of humanness -- what allows us to survive, persevere, make it through impossible conditions, difficulties, unimaginable horrors.  

I read it  at a time in my life when I was in the midst of the redefinition of self.  It feels lonely in those times when all the usual landscape has lost its markers.  When your life has high clouds.  It seems as if the great expanse of unknown will surely drop you into the abyss.  You'll never be found (by yourself or anyone else) again.  You'll lose you.  

And I remember a passage from the book...Mr. Frankl recounts a cold, dark nighttime journey.  While he marches through the darkness, he remembers his wife.  And as the sun comes up, and darkness turns to light, and hazy vision gives way to clear-sightedness,  he finds purpose and joy and contentment even amidst those most horrible of conditions.  He writes, "Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."  And it isn't the romantic kind of love.  It's the giving kind of love.  And if he can find it there, in that minute, in those conditions...I can certainly find it here in my high clouds.

And so I'm reminded that even my days of nearsightedness or farsightedness or no-sightedness will give way...I bet to an Orange Sky. 

Locum Tenens

Locum tenens...pretty much, a place holder.  A place holder.  Wow.

A few months back, I had the opportunity to work a few days at a low-income, high-volume clinic.  As a locum tenens.  Place holder.

I had to laugh.  You see, years ago, when my oldest was kindergarten, he was working away on his family unit in school.  When his teacher asked the normal questions about family -- who, what, where, when, why -- my little guy had a lot to say.  She asked about who was in our family, where we lived, what we did for our work.  My little one's answer?  His dad, well, he worked at a store.  His mom (me) -- well, I waited.  And no, not in a restaurant...I was not a waitress.

I waited.  I waited for him to get up in the morning, so I could make him breakfast.  Then I waited to take him to school.  After that I waited for him to get home from school, so we could do homework.  Then I waited some more until we had dinner.  To top it all off, I waited a bit longer until it was bedtime, when I, again, waited for him to wake up, so we could start all over again.

I think if he had known Latin, he would have said, 'My mom, she's a locum tenens -- she holds my space until I occupy it again.'

For years, I was offended.  Now I see his wisdom.  Yes, I do.  I wait.  And I hold a place.  This is my life's work.

People who know me have heard this speech before.  Sorry.

Years ago, I was given a copy of a book called Women's Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef.  I really can't tell you all the things it was about in detail, but I can tell you after I read it, my perspective shifted.  It's almost a without-the-right-words-to-explain type of shifting -- like some forms of art where you mustn't focus right on the piece, but rather lose your focus on the piece in order to understand it.

Let me try to elaborate.

The go-away message for me was that as a woman in America, it was no longer sufficient, nor even desired, to try to succeed in the male way of doing things.  It wasn't about breaking the glass ceiling; it was about REDEFINING the glass ceiling.  It wasn't about earning as many dollars as a man, but questioning the value we place on earning dollars.   It was about looking at the inherent feminine strengths and labeling them as valuable, worthy, socially enhancing traits.

My life's work embodies the exact message of Women's Reality.  As an midwife, I create a space for women to experience being women.  I recognize their unique strengths and encourage them to showcase their inherent assets.  I listen, I share, I observe, I demonstrate.  I witness couples turn to families, women turn to mothers, personhood come into existence.  I've been privileged to work with birth and make it woman-centered, woman-driven, empowering.  I'm a part of the redefinition and reclamation of this sacred act.

And in my role as midwife, I spend a lot of time waiting and I spend some time being a place holder.  I have to fine-tune the art of patience.  I have to be keenly aware of a woman's readiness to step into and bloom in this new role as mother.  It takes time.  So I wait.