Messenger

Toby and I had just reached the gate that begins freedom for both of us. He gets released from his leash, and as long as I can see or hear him, is allowed to follow his nose wherever it leads. Safe in the knowledge that he'll come when I call, I let my feet travel the familiar overgrown path and my mind wander wherever it needs.

Although midwinter, the day was gold and green and blue. It could have been a spring sky, with cloud lambs gamboling in wind-tossed fields. It could have been a spring day with bright sunlight coaxing buds to unfurl into air that held promise of warm nurturing. The bright moss and sword fern babies adorning old cottonwood trees pretended to be the spring green of leaves that are weeks away from being born.

As I was unclipping the leash from Toby's collar I heard the telltale pocking of a woodpecker. I searched a nearby tree for the origin of the sound and found him easily. A Hairy Woodpecker working on an ash tree less than six feet away. He seemed unaware of us, intent on forcing food from the bark in front of him. I watched him for a while, always fascinated at how he blends in. If not for the sound, I would never have known to look for him. Even the small slash of red on the back of his head is not enough to visually blow his cover.

The trail and Toby and my own restlessness pulled me away while the woodpecker was still busy on the ash. Toby tracked the scent of deer as though his life depended on it. When we reached the river, he dove for rocks as though his life depended on it. For the entire walk my mind searched high and low for answers, peace, and certainty as though my life depended on it.

The only thing found was the rock Toby pulled from the bottom of the river and carried proudly up the trail toward home. No deer. No answers.

On the return loop, back at the gate, my mind already home onto the next problem to solve, Toby at my side allowing the end of freedom for the day, a new sound caught my attention. A series of snaps, like a dish towel on a clothesline in a late spring breeze. I looked up in time to see my woodpecker friend fly just past my head into a nearby tree. He flew and landed, flew and landed several times before resting on the trunk of the same tree we'd seen him in just an hour before.

This time as I watched him and listened to the primal percussion of his wing beats, I became aware of an enveloping silence. As though time took a break, the earth stopped its spin, and the sunlight illuminated the invisible. Toby was perfectly still, my wise and willing companion in this gift of grace.

Once the woodpecker settled against the side of the tree, the only sound left was the rush of the unseen river to the north and east of me. No birds squabbling or singing. No squirrels chattering or scolding. Not one single car sound from the highway not that far away. Just perfect stillness.

I don't know how long the time out of time lasted, or how long it might have lasted if the woodpecker hadn't flown away, following some internal direction known only to him. Twenty-four hours later, as I sit with a mind overflowing with what-ifs and doubts, I can still feel that powerful, otherworldly stillness. And I try to find my way back into it.

photo from Flickr

Screen Door Melody

I was completely lost in my work, so awareness of the screen door banging dawned slowly. It seemed softer than usual. Did I really hear it?

The "usual" volume is when Emma, with all eight pounds of her furious feline indignation, wants in. Well into old age at 18, she's gotten more and more demanding with each year, so by now has no tolerance at all for being made to wait when she wants in. She goes to the back door, sits on the step and hits the screen door hard enough to make it bounce on its hinges and bang in its frame. She bangs and yowls with such frantic intensity that she never has to wait for long to be attended to.

This old-fashioned wood frame screen door is one of my favorite possessions, right up there with the clothesline and the blueberry bushes. Walt installed it right after we moved in almost twenty years ago, adjusting the tension of the spring, at my request, so the door would bounce gently as it closed. The quiet clapping sound of wood against wood is music that soothes and sings, "Home."

I'm not entirely sure why I love the sound of a wooden screen door. We didn't have screen doors at all in my growing up home. It was cheaper to hang obscene yellow ringlets of fly paper everywhere than it was to buy screens. In all my other homes since then, the screen doors have been utilitarian metal.

My only remembered experience with the wooden bounce of happy doors is from books and old movies where they were always (in my imagination at least) attached to homes full of love. Pollyanna comes to mind - even at the price of paralysis, I would have given anything to be her and to live her life. I can picture the gingerbread be-decked Victorian screen on the front door of her house even now.

In current time the wooden screen door melody is just part of the background music of my everyday life. I don't really hear it the dozens of times a day I open the door and release it to close - usually to let a cat or Toby in or out. I don't really hear the clock chime every quarter hour or the hum of the freezer on the other side of the wall from my desk either, but I do hear when they're silent.

So when I thought I heard the door bang, however softly, my first thought was to wonder how Emma got out because I had just seen her in her chair (actually my rocker). Something was out of synch. I got up from my desk chair, walked to the back door, opened it and saw nothing through the screen. No Emma. No Toby (who was in sleeping on our bed). No wind blowing.

Puzzled, I expanded my visual search to the edge of the patio and into the yard, where I saw a Douglas squirrel scampering away from me toward the protection of the Sweet Gum - his favorite hangout. Dougie!

These tiny little squirrels are fearless, aggressive, and sassy. They frequently chase away their much larger cousin Gray squirrels to get to the sunflower seeds. I laughed out loud in wonder and delight. The little rascal had braved the cold gray expanse of patio concrete where a red giant often sleeps and strange giant squirrels with sharp claws lurk, to come knock on my door.

I have no idea why. I only know he knocked, and then ran like hell. I hope next time he'll stay and chat, or at least wait for me to offer him a treat. In the meantime, I'll be listening a little more carefully for the music of my favorite door.

photos from Flickr

Announcement!

Carrie and I are thrilled to announce our spring line-up of memoir writing classes. We've expanded our offerings a bit to include both a morning class in Portland, OR, and an evening class in Battle Ground, WA. We're prepared to expand our online class from one to two if interest exceeds the six person limit (which applies to all classes).

Please visit our new class blog, Writing the Breathings of Your Heart, for all the details. We'd love for you to join us on our journey toward truth and healing through the writing of our stories

Where Your Eyes Go

"Look to the back wall. Where your eyes go, your head will follow."

I'm in cobra, holding myself up with the strength of my middle back ("Do not put any weight on your arms, this isn't a pushup!"). My eyes slide up the mirror in front of me and make it to the stained tiles of the ceiling before I have to return my attention to breathing so I don't pass out. The back wall, behind me, is visible only in my mind's eye. I doubt my actual eyes will ever see that wall from cobra.

There are other poses where we're given this direction in some form. "Look over your shoulder to the mirror." - requiring a three-quarter twist from a sitting position. "Keep bending back until your eyes are on the floor." - with knees locked and hips pushed forward. "Don't look at the floor. Keep your eyes on your forehead." - while adjusting feet and knees to a precise distance apart.

"Where your eyes go, your head (and body) will follow."

And so I move my eyes toward whatever part of the room the teacher directs, hoping my head and other body parts know they're supposed to follow. The interesting thing is they do, after a fashion.

Those times when I looked at the floor to catch my breath, or to become invisible, or to make my feet come together - nearly every one of those times, I lost my balance. I lost my focus every single one. I started watching other people in the class, comparing and coming up wanting. Wondering if a tattoo would help.

If I can concentrate on moving my eyes, or aiming them where they belong, I get much closer to a full expression of whatever pose I'm attempting at the time.

It's mid-winter. Damp cold, stark outlines, muted colors dominate. The weariness of bearing the weight of so much darkness lays over me like the musty wool blankets of my childhood.

Yet if I look, signs of spring are everywhere. Green crocus fingers poking up from their hibernation. A robin's insistent mate-seeking series of chirps. A little more light, a little later each day.

I'm halfway through my first year as a writer. Nowhere near where I want to be, or where I thought I might be at this time. My book, having served its purpose, now retired. The next one a shadow of an idea, but no more. Several potential directions became dead-ends early on.

What I do have instead is the joy of teaching writing to women who travel the same path, my first experience with a published story, and insights about my life and writing that would never have happened without the quiet and lack of structure of these last months.

"Where your eyes go, your head will follow."

I see the back wall. I see spring. I see my teaching and my book in the world offering the hope of healing and the promise of transformation. My head believes.

photos from Flickr

Rabbit

A yoga pose named Rabbit. Sounds soft right? Gentle gray velvet.

"Sit in fixed firm pose, flip your towel over your feet, grab your heels, straighten your spine, look at your navel and breathing out slowly bend forward until your forehead touches your knees. The top of your head should rest on the floor. Not too much pressure. Make sure your heels are touching, the tops of your feet are flat on the floor and you're not moving your head. If your knees are no longer touching your forehead, scoot them forward one at a time. Pull hard on your heels, lift your hips so that your thighs are at a ninety degree angle to the floor. Keep your chin tucked. This is a compression pose. It's supposed to be uncomfortable. Breath normally. If you can't breath normally, you're trying too hard. Don't bully yourself in here. Suck in your stomach. Keep your eyes open."

Not a bit of softness to be found. I suppose we might look a bit like rabbits hunched in fear against approaching predators, but the metaphor begins and ends there for me.

At the beginning of my yoga journey, I didn't mind Rabbit so much. It's close to the end of the session and follows Camel which in the early days made me so dizzy and disoriented I could barely get started. So Rabbit seemed easy by comparison.

It also seemed easy because I only managed to hear about three of the instructions, and I was able to convince my body to do those three things. I held my heels, touched my forehead to my knees, and remembered to breathe.

Over time, I've been able to hear more of the instructions and apply them one by one. Each time I make an adjustment, I'm amazed at how it changes the pose. This week it was, "Deb, can you flatten the tops of your feet to the floor?"

I actually wasn't aware that they weren't flat on the floor, although it wouldn't have mattered because until that moment, I'd never heard that part of the instructions.

And so I did - consciously make the tops of my feet flatten against my towel without undoing any of the rest of the pose I was clinging to. My right calf promptly seized in a cramp that knocked me completely out of a pose we're told to come out of carefully because we could hurt our necks. Lying on my back like an upended beetle, desperately trying to stretch out the knot in my leg, and also attempting not to be a distraction while the teacher looked on in amused concern, I found myself thinking how different the pose felt for the two seconds I managed to be there.

Each new awareness and adjustment creates conflict for me. I get excited at my progress, and amazed that my body is starting to unloose the iron survival grip that's been my normal for years. I marvel at how one small shift can change the entire pose and stretch previously unknown territory. And then I struggle with the shame that it's taken so long to make such small changes. And then I look straight into the face of overwhelm at the prospect of how far there is yet to go.

We're told constantly, "It could take a lifetime to completely understand this pose. It's okay. Just doing your best will get you full benefits."

I want to believe that. Some days I do. Maybe even most days. And I appreciate the permission, even as I scoff at how ridiculous it seems. I'm surrounded by agile, flexible, nearly naked gorgeous young people who are more often admonished to not go too far into a pose than urged to go deeper. Best has very different meanings for them than it does for me.

My struggle is not with doing my best. I frequently mistake best with trying so hard I lose myself, and have worked hard to break that pattern. My struggle is allowing my best to be good enough for now, and trusting that over time best will change, and believing the growth is more than a finger pointed backward at where I think I should have been long before.

Perhaps Rabbit is meant to be gentle and soft, or at least the approach to it. Perhaps allowing my body its own wisdom and timing, trusting that it wants to be free at least as much as I want that freedom - perhaps that's the key. Yesterday in Rabbit the tops of my feet were flat on the floor, and it wasn't even that hard to convince them to go there. Now if I could only get my hips in line with my knees.

photos from Flickr

Making Miracles

It was a rare January afternoon: sunny, balmy, the warm wind-stirred air teasing senses with spring. A perfect day for the refuge, our first since the arrival of the geese last fall. As we began our slow meander around the familiar loop, windows rolled down, seat belts off, Walt with his camera ready, me with the binoculars, I began my search for this day's miracle.

This sacred place where birds come to be safe, where the air shimmers with unearthly colors, where the sky is so big anything seems possible - this land offers me at least one miracle every single time I'm here. These are not the it's-a-miracle-because-all-of-nature-is-a-miracle kind of miracles. These are full-blown, even Moses would be impressed, no room for doubt miracles.

About two-thirds of the way around on this day, I began to prepare myself for disappointment, or at the least to adjust my definition of miracle. We'd seen coots, great blue herons, red tail hawks. Pin tail ducks were flocked in larger numbers than I'd ever seen before, but even their art-deco beauty didn't quite meet my criteria. There were tundra swans in the hundreds, huge elegant avian angels filling the air with their chuckles and chattering, but nothing about their presence sang miracle.

I found myself thinking about bald eagles. Looking for them, as I always do at the refuge. And becoming aware that I receive miracles because I seek them. It doesn't work to decide I'm going to see a bald eagle and that will be my miracle. Deciding anything doesn't work. Seeking and being open are the fertile ground from which miracles spring.

We were almost at the end of the loop - just one long straight stretch to go - when we stopped to watch some geese gathered close to the road. Walt had turned the car off so we could enjoy their mutters and honks, and my eyes were delighting in the textures of their feathers and colors in contrast to the grass glowing in the rare winter sunlight. In one sudden uprush they took to the air. We looked at each other in puzzlement. There was no obvious reason for the geese to spook.

I looked behind us to see if something there could account for the goose panic.

That would do it. Not one, but two bald eagles. Both young. One just getting his white head, the other still mottled brown. We watched them for a very long time as the older hunted and ate while the younger tried to steal, unsuccessfully, and resorted to stalking the other in hopes of a handout.

I remembered these magnificent miracle birds this last week as another type of miracle unfolded.

It started with an e-mail from middle brother Mark titled "Clare's Dad." Clare is older brother Frank's wife. Her dad in his eighties. The message was no surprise. He had died the day before. The funeral would be Friday.

I had never met Clare's dad. I was mad at Frank for calling Mark, but not me. We had company coming Friday night. So when Mark said he was going to the funeral I was torn. Even when he said younger brother Geoff and his wife would be going - probably. I didn't want to go, but I love Frank and Clare both, and this dad was a good dad to them both, so his death would leave a huge hole in both their lives.

I stewed. I prayed. I talked to Walt. Still uncertain, except I kept getting a picture of Frank looking up to see his three siblings sitting together in love for him. And that took me to yes. The four Lyons "kids" (all over fifty now) had not been in the same place together, friendly or otherwise, for almost a decade. Geoff, who has been estranged from Frank for years now, was going. How could I not?

Our united presence at that funeral became a tangible force of love. When I first saw my larger-than-life brother serving as one of the pall bearers for Clare's dad, he looked old and hunched and diminished. The only way I recognized him was his fuzzy halo of white hair. By the time we left much later in the day, after standing and talking as a family - joking, crying, hugging - Frank running to get his camera to record the momentousness the occasion - he was standing taller and much more himself.

Driving home after, Mark reflected on a book he's teaching for Sunday School in which the author talks about how God nudges us. And if we listen to the nudges, every day miracles will happen. Mark went on to share that this author believes miracles are commonplace (oxymoron?), and would be even more so if we as humans would pay more attention to the nudges.

Bald eagles are certainly becoming common in my life. Yet I always, every single time, experience them as miracles. As I learn to trust that small still voice within, the one that provides the nudges, I expect miracles will become more and more common. I seek. I'm open. I believe.

I love.

bird photos by Walt

family photo by Frank's wife, Clare

Never Odd Or Even

I wish I could remember when I first learned what a palindrome was. Like a new color in my box of Crayolas, these words and phrases that read the same forward and backward, have delighted my eye and ironed out some deep invisible wrinkle at my center since sometime in elementary school. The symmetry is so appealing, as is the weird wisdom that emerges from some of the phrases.

Never odd or even.

Dammit I'm mad.

Live not on evil.

The words are often pure music. My favorite: kinnikinnik (both a plant and a product of that plant).

Lately I've been considering the possibility that some of life's big themes are palindromic. Somehow the same thing whether approached forward or back, but not complete if cut on the line of symmetry.

"Never odd or even," split in half becomes "never od," which makes no sense.

Reading and writing are at the top of the list. Two different names, but so intertwined they cannot be separated from one another. I cannot write with reading, and I cannot read without being immersed in writing. I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but from the time I first realized those squiggles on the page could take me to faraway places, both the absorbing and creation of them consumed me as one deeply satisfying act.

Teaching and learning fit as well. It's impossible to teach without learning, as I'm being reminded on a daily basis these days in my role as teacher of writing. It's just as impossible to learn without teaching. I'm a student of writing on Tuesday nights, very aware that the feedback I offer teaches the whole group, just as their feedback teaches me.

Marriage. Two very different humans as husband and wife forming a whole that is very different from the separate units. And the palindrome of that relationship is richer, more powerful, more satisfying than each half alone.

Perhaps it's the sense of wholeness that makes palindromes so appealing to me. Not black or white, but the most beautiful shade of gray imaginable - pussy willows declaring the end of winter. Not right or wrong, but actions with the single purpose of meeting very human needs, some more effective than others. Not love or fear, but both intertwined in a bittersweet reality where sunlight is the brightest in the presence of dark clouds looming on the horizon.

In the last few weeks a hidden truth has risen to the surface of my heart. One that I held deep and dear, hidden even (or most especially) from myself. The series of events that led to this epiphany is a story for another time, but so clearly purposeful there's no way to deny this truth. However, it's such a hard-won truth, I wouldn't send it back if I could.

It started with questions: What if I never really wanted kids? What if motherhood was never my path? What if the unfinished grieving is not about not being a mother, but instead about not wanting to be? Those of you who know my story, know I've spend most of my adult life either trying to become a mother, compensating for not being by teaching elementary school, or trying to prove how hard I tried before I failed.

At the core was the belief that becoming a mother would prove God had forgiven me for giving up my only daughter (for wanting my own life more than I wanted to be her mother), and because there ultimately were no more children, I had not been forgiven. Which meant I was irredeemable.

However, the other half that creates such a very different whole is this: If I answer "yes" to those questions - if I accept and perhaps even embrace the truth that motherhood was never my path - then God's intervention, or lack of, was a blessing, a gift, an answer to prayers coming from so deep in my heart, I couldn't hear them.

Two ends of a story, incomplete until joined in understanding, to form a whole that feels very much like hope and forgiveness and love that was always there but unfelt until the ends met in the middle.

photo by Filip Nystedt from Flickr