Half-Life

I love the idea of half-life.  Partly because math isn't my strong suit, and so the idea that something is half diminished, but not really half gone is intriguing and a bit mysterious.  The reality that half-life time isn't half of the life of something, because right around the corner there will be another half-life, then another, and another -- well, as I said, I'm not a mathematician nor a physicist nor a chemist, so don't rain on my parade if my notion is slightly (or a lot) off -- but half-life seems hopeful.  Like what's on the other side of half-life can be whole-life.  Times infinity.

Except in my house, because if you said that in my house, you'd hear a common refrain:  "Infinity's not a number!  It's a concept." 

So I can't have my half-life turn into whole-life times infinity, but I think as I sit perched on what feels like my half-life, what lies before me feels and looks like whole-life.  If not whole-life plus one.

A friend asked me what I was going to do for my birthday.  I said write a blog post.  She said, "No, I mean, what fun thing are you going to do?"  And such is life.  Whole-life.

I had another friend ask me how I felt about turning 40.  I told him plainly, "It's a timestamp moment.  One of those times in life when you take a look around and appraise the situation.  What have I done and accomplished?  What did I set out to do and accomplish?  Have I become the person I was thinking I'd become?  What more do I have to do?  What more do I want to be?"

He asked about my four kids, where they fit in to what I wanted to do and be.  And I've had to put that in my pipe, so to speak, and think on that.  It's a tricky question.  For me.  

Taking stock is something I do daily.  I've been trained in it over the last many years.  I've had masters show me the way of self-less and thorough inventorying of character assets and character liabilities.  I've been required -- for happy living -- to take note of what's gone well and what went bust in my days.  I've had to -- as I've mentioned before -- course correct, sometimes like fine-tuning, sometimes like changing trains mid-trip -- a full rearrangement of self.

Here's what I see on a look back:  I haven't traveled as much as I thought I would, should or wanted to. I always imagined I'd end up traveling for a living, and that hasn't happened.  In fact, I haven't ever been to Canada or fully into Mexico or even Hawaii for that matter.  I've only been to Europe twice and those were brief stays.  Visited East Africa for a while, which is probably, to date, one of my life's best traveling highlights.  However, the countless road trips I've taken with my boys...well, those are priceless.  I am a SUCKER for a road trip, especially one with good company, oddities, and country roads.  Life with few expectations and the only known is what is unknown.  I can really get into it.  I've loved the parts of the US we've seen together.  I love that we've visited some twice...places we like so much we wanted to go back.  I'm blessed to have quality traveling partners in this life.

Career -- I don't have a retirement account.  I barely have enough quarters for Social Security.  I've given much of me and my life's energy into the growing of a family, not a bank account.  But the growing of that family gave me the best calling....midwife.  And so my job isn't really a job, but a blessing.  And I'm thankful to have found a place where my life falls together.  Going to work, for me, often feels like going to church...and I wouldn't trade that for all the tea in China or a retirement account (but ask me again when I'm of retirement age).

Friends...my life overflows with lifelong and newfound friends.  If there is any aspect of my life that's in deficit, it's because my friend life is in surplus.  Except not really a surplus, because each one plays such a unique and valued role in my days -- each one is vital and just right, right where and how they are.  I feel fortunate to the point of tears for the intense and gratifying exchanges I have with my friends.  And if you're reading this, and you are one, I hope you know the impact you have on my days, my heart, and my psyche.  One of my life's greatest gifts...good friends.

I've been blessed with good health and the ability to see and hear amazing natural wonders.  I do not take this for granted.  I'm acutely aware that there are people who will never climb Half Dome or even Bishop's Peak.  I can't pack into my cells enough gratitude for the time I've spent outside in the dirt seeing, smelling, hearing all Nature's Grandeur.  It is really out there that I feel at peace.  Out in the green and blue.

Likely, I haven't really been 'lucky in love' as they say...but even this is a blessing.  It's given me space in my life to love people wholly -- with my whole self.  Not a romantic kind of love, but the giving kind of love.  It's one of the parts of me I like the best -- this ability to see the lovable in people, especially in people who appear unlovable.

Family...I come from a wacky and large one.  But one of the best ones I've encountered.  We circle our wagons when needed and we shove baby birds out of the nest when needed and howl at the moon together around campfires singing loudly and proudly choruses of "Hey, Jude" or "Rocky Raccoon."

I am probably not as good of a mother as I could be.  I don't like board games much -- mostly because I hate the agony of defeat and someone always seems to lose in board games.  I don't like PTA either.  Sorry.  I'm much more a behind the scenes helper mother, so running for some office, coordinating meetings for school, or being a Booster isn't anything I'm going to do.  I have to draw some lines, and that's one or some.  I'm also not going to kill myself with extracurricular activities for kids, either.  Again, sorry.  I'm sure they could've done more chess club or I should've signed them up for hip hop dance class or we could've done more language immersion or self-defense or organized sports or...or...or swim lessons.  I'm sure I could've done more.  And I didn't.  But I won't lose sleep over it.  Much.

But I have loved them madly.  Intently.  With purpose and devotion.  How could I not?  Have you met them?  They are lovable.  And my role as mother is the best place I've found for thorough self-assessment and reflection -- always room to grow.  And so much of who I have become and how I have developed over the course of the (almost) last two decades is because of their presence.  As a friend recently pointed, I may have birthed my boys, but they, in turn, have birthed me as mother.

Which brings us back to my friend's question about my boys and how being their mother fits in my 40 years.  I am sure if they hadn't been -- for whatever reason -- I would have survived and thrived.  But their existence has enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined.  And today, when I see that family photo of the five of us, I have a deep and abiding sense that this -- this here -- this is whole-life.  

"You gotta live for the one that you love, you know.

You gotta love for the life that you live, you know."

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. 

Providence

I write best in the early morning.  NOT the middle of the night.  This is unfortunate as I've had more than enough middle-of-the-night awake hours, and hardly any peaceful early morning hours.  You can imagine all the raucous ruckus a house of four boys brings in early morning hours.  There is an overwhelming bounty of non-sensical noises and an equally impressive utter and complete lack of peaceful quiet.

Perhaps I should've raised them with religion.  Then we could have practiced morning devotionals.  In silence.  

So all the words, well, they just sit inside unrecorded.  Except for these.

The miles have been passing quietly.  I crave intense silence these days.  Gone, for now, are the days of blaring music.  I want to hear the measured pace of my breathing, my footfalls, that chorus of welcoming nature sounds out there in the dirt.  I'm going down my mental checklists as I trot along...where are my arms?  Am I moving at the elbow or the shoulder?  Are my shoulders back?  Head upright?  Am I relaxed?  These questions are such a welcome relief from the questions of life.  They're easily answered.  Corrections can be made.  It's simplicity.  And I'm clear, these small corrections, these details make me able to endure longer hours and more miles with less effort, less energy expended.  It's like an equation for living, not letting this life energy slip out in sloppiness and inattention.

And I signed up to endure -- 25K -- so these miles have been spent training to do just that.  Peacefully, quietly, happily.

I found I grew increasingly introspective, reflective, quiet as race day approached.  All the places I look for inspiration, support, encouragement...well, there was a block there.  My house was quiet.  My boys gone.  All except one.  The day before the race was rainy.  I worked -- typed -- quietly, surprised at the depth of my need for solitude.  At some point, I suffered a crushing paper cut and thought this was sufficient reason for pulling out of the race.  In some minutes of quiet, the head can come up with the most absurd ideas that seem completely logical.  Which is why this girl occasionally needs to break the silence.  Get input from outside.  And before this race, this is what that outside grace sounded like:

If for some weird apocalyptic reason I could only have one song to accompany me on this life journey, especially this running odyssey, I'd want it to be this.  It is my life anthem, I think.  I'm sad I didn't write it.  From its opening, it makes me perk up and pay attention.  I am that person, out the door, going forward, not in a straight line (my life has taken turns), all the while a chorus of voices (perhaps mostly in my head) signing their disapproval.  I am the girl with long hair coming down my shoulders, tired, feeling so much older.  

And my life, it has come down to the women for survival.  Don't get me wrong, boys and men are fabulous.  I love them and think they're great, but in my life, I look around and easily see the profound efforts of women carrying this society along.  How could I not?  I'm a midwife.  I watch women all the time dig deeper than they ever knew existed inside their very own selves and come up with making the impossible possible.  I see them in the midst of the truly singular journey surrounded by their loves, but accomplishing something that only they can accomplish.  It's humbling to bear witness to such strength and perseverance in the face of doubt, exhaustion, fear.  It's more humbling still to see the results of their efforts.  And it's even more humbling to stand in their presence after their transformation...from woman who didn't believe to woman who did.  

Quite logically, you can see how these women are my inspiration and my drive as I pass the miles, take the next step, continue on a path that seems impossible.  I hold them close to me and carry them along the miles.  They are better than any sports drink ever.  They are my aid stations.  

So as I drove to the race -- this 25K race -- I wondered to myself why I run.  The answer seems to evolve as the days pass.  I add new answers as I grow up and grow older.  I run for relief, for solitude, for fitness, for spiritual rearrangement.  But I had to ask myself the other morning, do I run for penance?  It was rainy, cold, muddy.  The run promised to be harsh.  And for what?  Was I running as a form of amends for trespasses against others?  To reconcile trespasses against me?  Was I running from?  Was I running to?  

And I had to admit, I run to leave things behind.  I leave behind those bits of me, the aspects of living, the ideas that hold no more promise.  I leave behind the sadnesses and the heartbreaks.  I leave behind the the seeds that have no hope of sprouting flowers.  Surprising things happen out there as I shed the obsolete.  A new world opens and for everything I leave behind, I replace it with something plucked from along the path, something creative and life-giving, something reliable and sure, something new and steady.  

And so this is what I found on the trail that day, as I hiked up wet, slippery hills, got pelted by rain, and endured the wind:  I'm running WITH these days.  I'm running with me.  I'm running with life as it is.  I'm running with certainty in uncertain conditions.  I'm running with peace.  I'm running with quiet.  I'm running with people -- the ones I carry inside, and, surprisingly, the ones running alongside me.  I am there, a part of a whole and whole being apart.  

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.  

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have 

occurred.  A whole stream of events issues from the decision, which no one

could have dreamed would have come their way.  

                                                                                        -- W. H. Murray

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.