Sky Gifts

A raw early November day, my birthday. I enjoy the day as much as I've enjoyed anything in the last year. Which means I'm as fully present as possible around the grieving that's taken up residence in my body since last December. As we walked toward the restaurant on the Tacoma waterfront, where I anticipated a wonderful evening with family, the sky caught my eye. I gasped gratitude, both at the incredible beauty, and for the flare of joy the view ignited.

It was as though I hadn't seen the sky in months. And it's not that I didn't look. I love the sky in ways I love little else in my life. It's where I meet God, find answers, see birds. It's what lifts my heart and stirs my spirit. It is both constantly changing and constant. Even when I can't see it, which is often in the Pacific Northwest, I know it's there waiting for me.

Sky has been there every single day for the last year, yet it has seemed beyond reach in some way. Muted, veiled, distant.

When it spoke to me on my birthday I accepted it as one more gift of the day, and then forgot about it. Although the picture I took stayed with me, pushing itself into my consciousness at odd and random moments.

Then a couple of weeks later I was up at my regular predawn hour, doing my usual morning tasks, when a faint glow caught my eye. I looked east to see the palest infant pink behind the half-century-old douglas fir sentinels that surround our place. It's a common sight for me, one I almost take for granted. One I've seen and turned away from without praying gratitude for the last year. On this day, however, that tender light found its way through a crack of my broken heart, and something new stirred.

Since then the sky has showered me with gifts, as though to strengthen our renewed connection: A full lunar eclipse viewed alone in holy stillness. A young bald eagle flying directly overhead. My owl perched on the flagpole for the first time in months. Bright blinding sunshine filling an afternoon with gold. A whiskey-throated raven flying up the river, then back again, offering some message I can't quite grasp, but don't seem to mind missing.

On this first anniversary of her death I am able to imagine my daughter held in the arms of the sky, freed from gravity in all its forms. I long to grow wings and search for her among the stars, to bring her home. Yet I accept Sky's timing and the grace of its wisdom. I look upward to stars made brighter through my tears, and breathe gratitude.

It's been weeks since I've been around to visit my virtual friends, and I want you to know I miss you. Walt is recovering from shoulder replacement surgery. Work has been insane. Christmas is at our house this year. I'll be back to a routine after the holidays, both as a blog friend and as a blogger. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your lovely wishes, your prayers and your understanding. It helps more than I can say. 

Tradition

I sat at my desk, hoping to get two hours of work done in an hour of planning time. The room was blessedly still and I was in a groove correcting, planning, organizing. I barely heard the faint knocking, but looked up to see a pair of eyes focused intently on me through the thin rectangular window of my back door.

For a brief second I considered ignoring the face and the knocking, but experience told me that seldom works. So I waved a welcome to two very small children. First graders as it turned out, bearing cupcakes. The leader, a spunky red-head who told me her name was Cheyenne, extended the plastic grocery store cupcake holder in my direction.

"Do you want a cupcake?" she asked.

"Is it your birthday?" I replied. I've had this conversation a hundred times or more in my teaching career. I know my lines well by now.

"No. It's his," Cheyenne said, pointing to the solemn pale boy standing eyes-down behind her.

"Happy Birthday! What's your name?"

"His name is Igor." Clearly Cheyenne had her own script.

Igor looked up at the sound of his name, but didn't seem concerned that he wasn't being allowed to talk. He stood quietly as I selected a cupcake as pale as he was, except for the lime green sprinkles. His expression didn't change even the slightest as I lavished birthday happiness on him. Cheyenne was also not interested in my chitchat. She was on a mission.

They were in my room for kindergarten last year and wanted to know (Cheyenne did anyway) where their former teacher was. She would be the next recipient of a birthday cupcake. It dawned on me that my cupcake was a toll willingly paid for directions.

By then I was so intrigued by the six-year-old woman in charge, I didn't mind losing the desperately needed work time. I enjoyed her confidence as much as I wondered how much Igor understood what was going on. I stood and walked the two to the other door in my room, and pointed them in the right direction with clear instructions. As I turned back to my desk I heard her say to him, "I told you her nice!"

I spent the rest of that planning time pondering this weird elementary school birthday tradition. Kids bring cupcakes (store-bought—homemade is not allowed) to school to share with classmates for their birthdays. The birthday child and one chosen friend scoot around the school at some point with whatever is left over to share with teachers. It doesn't seem to matter whether they actually know the teacher or not.

Although I never eat the cupcakes, I never refuse them either. I've always loved birthdays particularly, and there's something about being even a small part of celebrating the lives of these incredible, still-forming beings that eases my heart. For the moments of our exchange when they get to see an adult happy for their existence and when I get to see potential in all its brightest glory, nothing else matters. And for the rest of the day as I work around the sticky cake with lardy frosting decorated in colors never found in nature I hold that child in all the light I can bring to bear.

Occasionally the cupcake ritual will give me two kids instead of one to celebrate.

Photo from blogs.dallasobserver.com

Layers

No Indian Summer this year after a summer that was barely summer. One of the shortest autumns I can remember. November has become everything that makes winter so hard to bear here: cold, gray and bone-gnawing damp. Days begin in darkness, and fade all too quickly back into deeper darkness, with more than a month before the light begins to assert itself again.

So much in my life to be grateful for. A long list easily accessed and appreciated. Called upon as a shield against winters: the season coming and the year just ending.

Like the black depths of tidal waters, winter threatens to pull me under. It's only November. The month of my birth. This year a significant transition in more ways than the new decade might account for. Usually I enter winter saturated with the warmth and light of the previous year, enough to get me close to spring when I can feel new light beckon.

Not this year. I'm tired. And cold. And try as I might, the shield refuses to hold.

I've read about anniversaries, held friends through theirs, prayed for comfort for survivors facing the end of the first year without loved ones. This is my first. Like so many of life's biggest events, there is no preparing for or even describing what it feels like.

Kathleen's death date is a bit more than a month away, yet every day now it's as though I just heard the news for the first time.

The night of my birthday celebration, my SIL, the one whose son took his life two weeks after my daughter took hers, gave me a book. Privately, out of the glare of the family gaiety. A memoir written by a women about her sister's suicide. While it might seem to be an inappropriate birthday present, it was my favorite. Both because it was the first real acknowledgment she's made of our shared loss, and because she knew exactly what that book would mean to me.

With the early onset of winter weather, most of the leaves which light the darkness of November have fallen prematurely. For days last week the wind whipped foliage from trees in blizzards of dying color. Yet there remains in our yard a maple in full flame. It's been aglow for more than a week and continues to  pulse red through the fog that clings to everything from sunup to sundown.

At first I looked at it, admired it, then turned away, certain it's beauty would be stripped away as quickly as it has been for every other tree in our yard. But it continued to beckon from the edge of the yard until it pulled me outside with my camera. I tried to resist. I have lots of pictures of more fall beauty than this year could ever hope to offer. But I found myself drawn, in bathrobe and rubber boots, hair spiky from sleep, into the cold morning mists.

I'd moved around to shoot the tree from its most symmetrical angle, still not sure what I was looking for, or what it was offering. Then I realized it wasn't just the fiery maple I needed to see. It was the maple behind her sister, already stripped bare for the winter, and in front of the sequoia, which will never be anything but lush and green and strong.

The layers are a perfect metaphor for my life right now. Seeing everything through the filter of death, the light of dying flaring brighter than ever in the time left, the constant shape and color of life that doesn't die.  No one more true or more real than the other, all existing together in a tableau that offers comfort. Not warm quilt, hot cocoa, warm fire comfort. But a small, significant flame of comfort, like a pilot light - enough I believe to hold me through the winter ahead.

Alive

Today's the day. At 3:53 this afternoon I will be 60. Mom used to try to call me at the exact time of my birth—one of the few rituals in our life together that let me know she celebrated my presence in her life.

As you know, this last year of my fifties has been difficult. I came to the end of it shaken and unsure of my path. The dream I'd spent the last several years in pursuit of was as tattered as storm-torn foliage after a level 5 hurricane. Instead of asking myself about next steps toward fulfillment, my questions became more and more about whether I'd been fooling myself all along.

So, this is the birthday present I'm giving myself: the reclaiming of my dream. I do it here with you all as witness because I know you understand more than anyone could.

I will write. I will be published. I will teach and edit and coach.

My words will matter, will be a force of light and healing in the world. I was given the gift of words and the gift of the dream to offer those words to anyone who might benefit, or simply enjoy. I claim it as my privilege and responsibility.

I sit here at my computer, the place where I meet my Muse and the place where I unfurl the wings that will carry me toward the dream I didn't ask for, but that is mine nonetheless. There are feathers everywhere, and birds and angels. A lush peace lily provides backdrop. A huge picture window lets in light and gives my eyes hundreds of shades of green to rest on. The picture of my mom gazing with such love at my newborn self is to my right. On both sides and behind me are hundreds of books—my inspiration, my guides.

This is the place where time ceases to have power or meaning.

On this machine I have your words and wishes, your love and support, which mean more to me than a thank you could possibly express.

And on the small bulletin board hung to hold artifacts for current work are these words from Ernest Hemingway:

From things that have happened and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason.

Here's to immortality. Here's to a new decade and dreams come true. Here's to you, dear reader, for being here and sharing this incredible adventure with me.

Compatible Numbers

Toby's birthday is tomorrow. Four years ago, in a kennel in the country, he was born on a day that was ordinary for us in every way. We hadn't gotten serious yet about searching for a dog who would fill the still tender hole left when Riley died the winter before. We didn't even know that there was a breeder of golden retrievers twenty minutes from our house. We had no idea, six weeks later,  when we chose the biggest pup in the litter, and the one who seemed the least fazed by anything going on around him, just how extraordinary he would be.

Four is a good number. Round and compatible. In a dog's life, four is no longer puppy—even for a golden.  After many months of thinking perhaps he would never soften into legendary golden mellowness, one more time, he's fooled us. Four is the perfect number for him.

Toby is still playful. He loves his walks. He gets neurotically focused when we play ball in the back yard. He offers toys for tugging.

He is still self-possessed. He does nothing without a reason, never just out of obedience. He chases squirrels, barks at deer both real and imagined, and often decides he'd like to go outside in the middle of the night. No is not an answer he understands.

But more than anything now, he's affectionate. Finally, he's become something resembling the dog we thought we wanted. He frets if one of us comes home late, and grins with glee when the missing person finally arrives. After two years of having me home mostly full time, this fall has been hard for him. When I am home now he'll sprawl where I have to step over him, or follow me around and do his head-bury in my legs every chance he gets.

My birthday is Saturday. Sixty years ago in a hospital in Spokane, I was born to a nineteen-year-old girl already divorced from my father. While she didn't pick me, and her life definitely was not following the path of her dreams, she loved the baby who was me.

The girl I became was not what my mom expected or even understood. Outspoken. Curious. Fearless. Always asking questions and frustrated if the answers didn't satisfy. A nose for truth and not-truth. Challenging. Strong-willed. Impatient. Everything she was not.

And by the time I had mellowed enough to reach beyond the walls we both erected to survive our relationship, she was lost behind hers. I wonder sometimes, even now, if there might not have been a way for her to have found her way back to love.

Sixty is a good number. Round and compatible. Someone said recently that when we turned fifty it was easy to still believe we had half our life to go. It's not out of the realm of possibility to live to one hundred. That's not as easy to rationalize at sixty. One hundred and twenty seems neither possible nor desirable.  I've spent this last year knowing it was coming, and uncertain how it would feel. It turns out sixty is the perfect number for me.

Like Toby, I still possess all those same qualities from my youth. And, like Toby, more than anything I've become the human version of a loyal and affectionate dog. I'm ready to be here, and eager for the adventure that is this next leg of my journey. Full of gratitude to have arrived healthy, surrounded by love, and able to love. Grateful for dreams demanding fulfillment. Joyfully grateful to be sharing this birthday season with Toby. My gift. My buddy. My teacher.

The Opposite of Sharp

It was one of those times when I knew as the words left my mouth they meant more than I intended. Sitting across from my counselor, soaking up her optimism and wisdom, talking about the struggle that is this year, I said, "I'm just not as sharp as I was a couple of years ago."

I meant that it's harder to remember things, harder to hold large quantities of information in short term memory, harder to make the hundreds of decisions an hour the job demands. I spend my days worrying I'll forget something important, let my team down, hurt a child in some way because I'm just not at the top of my game.

In a life full of loss and disappointment, I learned early on to rely on my brain. It was the one thing I could trust to provide answers, even though it's taken me years to realize not all of the answers were helpful or even completely true. I was one sharp cookie. I felt special for being so smart, for being a step or two ahead of everyone else. It was the one thing I knew my mom valued in me. The one thing I was encouraged to develop.

Aging (I'll be sixty so very soon) has been a definite factor. The early days of menopause were a nightmare of forgetting, and a new inability to find the right words for anything. Hot flashes were a walk in the park compared to the frustration of losing the one thing I had always been able to rely on. Over time I got used to the softening of my thinking, and clung to what remained. Worked at sharpening my remaining faculties so I wouldn't hit old age with a brain dull as river rock.

Then this last year happened. The losses. The grieving. The new demands of a job that was hard when I left and has gotten harder even for people still sharp and in shape for it. The war between my head and my heart. Head furiously trying to find sharpness again and thwarted at every turn. Heart wanting gentle quiet, slow movement, time to heal.

Pat, always honest even when I'm not sure I want her to be, replied, "I know you're not as sharp. But you are much more wise. Isn't that what you've always wanted?"

Well, yes. But I thought I'd get wisdom and still get to keep what I had before. I didn't realize the price for a life lived more gently, with more kindness and tenderness, was going to be my sharpness.

In the days since that conversation I've thought a lot about being sharp. The picture I get is of honed knives, paper edges, pointy objects. Things that cut, sever, separate. My own sharpness keeping me safe from the unknown and possible hurt. But also keeping me alone, lonely, isolated.

My heart has been waiting a very long time for this. Unlike my brain who has always demanded total control, heart is willing to share. All she wants is a chance to be heard and trusted. To have her language understood. Her timing valued. So this is wisdom: trust, acceptance, surrender. No sharp edges allowed, or more importantly, needed any longer.

Working in the Dark

Friday morning. An hour or so before sunrise.  Cold dew clings to my toes. It's a work day, but I'm in my back yard, hanging sheets on the line. There's so little light, I'm working by feel. Square corner to square corner, pegged. Pillowcases snapped out, my fingers doing the dance of setting them against the line and attaching the pins, all without  conscious thought.

The forecast said rain for the weekend, and for the forseeable future. I need to have one last week sleeping surrounded by the scent of outdoors, on the soothing scratchiness of line dried sheets.

It takes less than ten minutes. Toby wandering just out of sight, happy to have company, not needing more than that. The air holding a distinct bite. I look up at one point, survey the sky. Big Dipper, summer companion since childhood, to the north. Orion, a winter constellation, to the south. I take a deep breath that tastes like mountain streams.

My task done, toes beginning to numb, I move slowly toward the house. I'm reluctant to let go of this feeling of connection, freedom, mystery. Reluctant to step back into this life I've accepted, but that I still don't see the purpose of. Not the larger one - the one that holds my dreams at its center.

Wishing to stay a while longer in this moist glittering darkness that seems to understand. Delaying the return to artificial light, soon to be the primary light available for months to come.

I send a prayer to a friend who died this week, and to her family. She'd lived a long and full life. Even so, it's too soon.

Summer fading into fall, the season of dying. Not death itself, which is winter. But the season of transition from one form of life to another. Days shorten. Nights lengthen. Sunlight visits from time to time as a reminder that it will always return. Darkness beckons, offering a place to heal, a safe protected nest for transformation.

On this morning, for maybe the first time, I release my longing for the light. Trust it will come to dry my sheets when I'm gone into the world . Trust it to return as summer in due time as I set out to explore what the darkness has to teach me. Orion will travel across the sky in the months to come, my companion for winter, my reminder that beauty and meaning exist even in the darkest of nights.