Gift

When I opened the door to let the kids into the classroom, it was the usual happy chaos of good mornings and good-natured pushing around those whose need to share something with me couldn't wait until they were in the room. On this day, unusually for them, two girls hung back to be the last. One blonde and brash, the other dark and shy, both deeply dear to me.

The blonde shoved a small wrapped package into my hands, her words tripping over each other like rocks rolling down a hill. The shy girl watched intently as I took the gift, and offered her own words, which got lost in the other's avalanche. "Secret Santa" emerged a few times, but I heard little else beyond, "Open it now!"

There was a note taped to the outside of the gift, with "Shucka" (no Mrs. in sight) written in ink on top of the folds. Both girls were crowded so close to me that I had to unfold the paper with elbows tucked to my sides. The paper itself was from a notepad with a hole at the top for a pencil to rest with the initial F at the top. Neither girl has an F as an initial for either first or last names.

I read:

Represents

about

Alex  

-secret santa

:-) <3

p.s. secret santa will be the one to hold you at the end of the day to the buses. 

The package was wrapped so tightly I knew it was a heart before the paper came off - with the girls still so close to me I felt gift-wrapped myself. And what a heart it was. Large, poufy, sparkly, only slightly grimy around the edges. The Goodwill tag still attached. (I didn't see that word as part of the gift until much later.)

The girls were beside themselves with  a weird combination of glee and tenderness. "We don't know who your Secret Santa is. Someone put the package in our hands and told us to give it to you. The heart is Alex."

I played my part, although I was having a hard time holding back tears. "I guess I'll have to wait until after school to find out. I wonder who would have done such a wonderful thing for me."

With the heart placed prominently on my desk I pushed us all into the day. During the morning I felt both girls watching me whenever I would reread the note, or shift the heart out of the way. For a bit I wondered which was my Secret Santa, but then forgot about the whole thing as I gave myself over to the thousands of decisions and conversations that are the hallmark of every teacher's day.

At the end of the day, after giving closing directions and while overseeing the usual pandemonium of twenty-four kids on the verge of freedom, I felt a nudge at my left arm, which I lifted to encircle the unseen child. I looked down into huge brown eyes beaming up from a porcelain face framed by waves of almost-black hair. 

I smiled back down at her, and for long moments there were no words at all. Just knowing. And love. And the ghost of a kitty only two weeks gone.

She stood under my wing for the rest of the day - as I guided the kids to the bell, and all the way to the buses.

Eventually there were words: "I saw the heart and I thought of Alex, so it's him to remind you he's still with you so you won't be sad."

"This is the best gift a student has ever given me, and now I'll remember both you and Alex whenever I see the heart."

At the doorway to her bus, we hugged, I kissed the top of her head in benediction, told her I loved her and breathed the purity of her love in and back out into a world greatly in need.

Wishing for all of you at least one gift of this magnitude this holiday season. Your presence in my life, your comments of encouragement and love, your stories - these are all gifts I treasure in the same way I'll always cherish that Goodwill heart. 

Promise

Just a couple of days before our recent stretch of clear cold, I found myself driving into blackness on the way home from school. A storm had passed before me, a big one that soaked us as we walked kids to buses and that left the asphalt shiny and hissing. At one point the road and sky seemed to blend together.

We often get storms like this in the summer and I'm oddly energized by them. As light and dark battle it out across the sky I feel more alive, like I'm watching Creation unfold. I also know that rainbows are inevitable, and none are ever more vivid than at the juncture created by the passing storm.

My mind is always a jumble after a work day. As hard as I try, I can't leave the kids or the problems or the to-do list at school. Worse, every instance where I might have been kinder buzzes and bites like a mosquito with a vendetta. If I'm lucky I can clear most of it by the time I've gotten home and walked. If I'm not so lucky, I lug the whole load through a restless night and back to school the next day.

So the storm and the search for the rainbow were a welcome distraction on this day. A reminder that summer, both literal and figurative, really did exist, and will come again. As my eyes scanned the sky for color, the world expanded beyond school and my own limitations. When I first spotted a section of the vibrant arc in the distance, one end touching ground far away and the other swallowed by darkness, I smiled.

I drive home on country roads. At that time of day I often have them to myself. That made it easy to slow to a creep from time to time and scan the sky. I wasn't disappointed. The other half of the original section touched down right where my eyes searched. And before too long the color stretched up from both sides to meet in the middle, forming a perfect and complete arc. There was even a shadow of a second rainbow mirrored above the first.

The miracle of color at the intersection of light and dark never fails to fill me with wonder. I'm reminded of God's promise to Noah, but somehow that seems weak compared to the promise I feel with every rainbow given to me. And they all do feel like personal gifts.

As I continued my drive, and the storm traveled ever eastward, the rainbow danced and wavered and shifted. I lost it completely at one point. A little farther on it reappeared much closer, a short section, the bands of color fat and distinct. I realized I was driving toward it, wondered if I might go under it—or through it. A golden glow on the asphalt just ahead caught my eye. The rainbow ended on the road right in front of me. And it stayed there while I drew close and drove through, and then it was gone.

In a life abundant with grace and miracles, it's easy to take gifts for granted. Always to recognize them, and always grateful, but perhaps to not appreciate fully the love behind them. Often forgetting when the darkness threatens to overwhelm that light always returns. And so the Giver of gifts offers a moment like that one, with a rainbow just for me, promising to light the way unfailingly.

Thanksgiving

When people asked last week what I was doing for Thanksgiving, I was aware that my response felt so ordinary: a three hour drive north to my baby brother's. We've gone enough years in a row now that I can't remember when this became our family tradition. I take it for granted, while at the same time holding deep gratitude for its existence. There were some years where we didn't talk, let alone sit at a common table and hold hands in grace to offer a communal thank you.

Three generations formed the circle around the table, and three different families of origin were represented there. Two of my three brothers, one to my left and one on the right just on the other side of Walt, laughing and pitching shit and embodying that combination of child and adult unique to sibling relationships.

Our missing family members were there in other ways. The absent brother and a daughter/niece via phone. Our mother in the cherry pie I'd gotten up early that morning to bake. Our father, the good parts, in the eyes and voices of my brothers.

The food honored childhood traditions while incorporating the creations of a new generation. Turkey and stuffing. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Cranberries made from scratch by my middle brother. Green bean casserole. Rolls and butter. A small creamed corn casserole just for my youngest brother, a remnant of our childhood that only he enjoys. Pumpkin pie to go with the cherry. Phyllo-dough roll-ups filled with kale and mushrooms.

We played Mexican Train as we always do now when there's a sibling gathering. A game that takes hours to complete, and that brings out a competitiveness we don't often reveal. There is grumbling and laughing and some swearing, and there is fun in its most satisfying form.

So when the phone call came on Friday morning, I received the news from the nest of that profoundly ordinary yet powerfully extraordinary love.

Alex had died Thanksgiving night. One of the two cats we got last winter. Apparently a stroke, he collapsed and was gone in minutes. Our fifteen-year-old pet sitter was with him. Her mom, who made the call, had decided not to ruin my Thanksgiving, to give me as much time not knowing as possible. The drive home was one of the longest ever on a road we've traveled hundreds of times. Traffic was bad, but mostly I was afraid I'd get home and find Bunkie gone, too. My friend said he was hiding under a bed, and not eating. Bunkie who was fearless and who had an endless appetite. Bunkie who had never been away from his brother, and who was now alone.

Grief is the ultimate paradox: simple and complicated in their most extreme forms. Loss. Sadness. Emptiness. The pain surprisingly physical. Many-layered—new grief seems to attach itself to old grief and be flavored by it. Unresolved grieving finds outlet in new loss, magnifying it exponentially. Grief allowed to live on the surface teaches the new grief, like a kind old dog with a puppy, and somehow softens its impact.

And therein lies the biggest gift of Alex's death. My grief for him is clean. It burns like snow on bare feet, but it does not threaten to avalanche. Even though the third anniversary of Kathleen's death is just a couple of weeks away, and I am reminded more deeply of her loss now, this new grief seems a separate thing.

Maybe I've finally reached the place in life where losing loved ones is familiar. There is a loose pattern to grieving, and I know if I'll allow the sadness its voice, it will lose much of its bite. The initial impact is not influenced by the length or type of relationship.  I also know there are gifts to be found in this time that cannot be experienced in any other arena.

As I was on the phone Friday morning hearing the news, I became aware that everyone in the house stood in a circle before me. Looks of love and concern filled the space between us, and held both Walt and me as we struggled to absorb the impact.

A young woman, no stranger to loss already, had her first experience being present at a death. She got to learn that she could not only survive the pain and shock of it, but she did so in the arms and hearts of people who love her and who are more concerned about her well-being than anything else.

Walt, determined to soften my pain, insisted on burying Alex himself. I stayed inside holding Bunkie.

Bunkie ate on his own this morning for the first time since Alex died. He hasn't been back under the bed since yesterday morning when I pulled him out to let our sitter see him. Right now he's curled, purring, in my lap. I breathe a prayer of gratitude that he's not going to grieve himself to death, and that he seems to have chosen me as an acceptable substitute for his brother.

The world has not yet settled itself back into ordinary. The aftershocks are frequent (I see Alex out of the corner of my eye constantly), but lessening in intensity with each one. The reminder that death comes on its own terms stays fresh, making life in this moment all the more precious. The warm bundle in my lap. Good coffee. Rain tapping out music on the window. Toby snoring peacefully in another room. Walt doing the same at the other end of the house. Brothers in my life in all the best senses of the relationship. Friends who offer love in ways that constantly magnify the meaning of the word. This breath I take in, and release, softening my heart with each contraction and expansion.

Between

Retirement has become a regular topic of conversation in our household. I bring it up. Often. Walt, who could retire in another year and a half, loves his days as a teacher of math to middle school kids. He got his 35 year pin a couple of years ago, and he seems to gain more satisfaction with his job every year. I'm really grateful for that. Because it's not his retirement I'm wanting. It's mine.

I feel much like I did when I was twelve. I can barely see that girl across the half-century gap that separates us, but I remember her unhappiness. No longer a child, not quite a teenager, not wanting to be there (wherever that was), but not sure where exactly she did want to be. Adulthood beckoned like big city lights, offering freedom, independence, adventure unrestricted by authority. Childhood had not been so great, but a stubborn part of her held out hope it wasn't too late to recover at least some tendrils of the uncomplicated joy she believed she'd missed out on.

She would look in the mirror and be confused by what she saw. Still expecting the braids and bangs and freckles that had defined her younger face, not yet able to see the sophisticated beauty she hoped her adult face would bring, nothing seemed quite right. A seventh-grader, barely surviving the seas of junior high after the quiet pond of elementary school (which she longed to be away from), she endlessly compared herself to flashing schools of town girls. They seemed confident, comfortable, and oh so worldly. Everything she was not.

Caught between the past and the future, the present offering nothing her soul longed for, she waited. She made a friend. She resisted her family. She wrote and read her way into her deeper truer self.

Fifty years later, retirement beckons in the same way adulthood once did. I see retired friends enjoying freedom, and exploring new adventures with energy I get to experience only one month out of every year. I'm at the end of a career I never expected to practice for so long and which has never fit quite right, like a beautiful dress bought one size too small. With the stubborn hope that has sustained me over the decades, I start every new school year searching for spiritual gifts and some answer that will finally make that dress fit.

Looking in the mirror is just as confusing as it was all those years ago. While my face never did morph into sophisticated beauty, it did become a friendly face that people often believed they'd seen before and felt comfortable with. A pretty face with an easy smile. And she's still in there, that younger adult, just harder to find behind the wrinkles and jowls and eyes that show everything whether I want it revealed or not.

I want to do more than just wait out these next few years. It might be only two. It might be three. Or it might be more depending on the bottom line financially. But unlike when I was twelve, there is not the luxury of the appearance of unlimited time. However, maybe I can borrow from the wisdom that kept her safe and whole enough to get to the freedom and independence she sought:

Rely on friends for comfort and fun and true mirroring. Resist whatever seeks to kill dreaming and hope. Embrace the one thing that has remained constant from the time squiggles on a page became a magic door; read and write the way through.

Longing

One afternoon on the way home from work this week I drove into a massive field of blue over which shreds of cloud drifted. A half moon, pregnant toward full, sat in the middle of everything, emulating the clouds around it. An unclasped necklace of geese scattered across the sky, moving purposefully toward a destination I could not discern.

Often when I'm outside in these shortening days I can hear geese calling even when I can't see them through fog that seems to be the handmaiden of winter darkness. Come join us, I hear. Vestigial wing buds twitch and burn beneath my skin.

A morning driving in later than usual, late enough that the thickly clouded sky reveals both texture and form, I realize that beneath the myriad shades of gray flickers the faintest fire of pink. In the west. Not the east where one would expect to see a sunrise. I look behind me to be sure, and the east is as gray as the down of a goose. The pale blush stays with me for most of the trip to school before it's absorbed by sky mountains of thick moisture.

Even in these days when Persephone has returned to Hades and her mother's grief leaves the world to fend for itself, surprising bits of color manage to survive. Nasturtiums glow orange and gold. Geraniums offer flecks of magenta and salmon. Even roses unfurl hopeful reds into gray days.

Occasionally a strong wind will swoop out of nowhere, first tickling the tops of trees, and then scouring everything in its path below. Blizzards of leaves fill the air, along with maple seeds rotoring madly to the ground. Nakedness follows in its wake: trees stripped, the air empty and clean, my defenses breached.

Always this time of year fills me with a formless longing. This year is no different. Except the quality of yearning has shifted.

Before, I thought I knew what my wings would carry me to if I could only find a way to release them. That destination changed from year to year, but there was always some concrete missing thing or person or accomplishment that I believed I was destined to find. And that I believed would once and for all be my ticket to a life in the sky.

I finally know that it's not that simple. There will be no one event to release me from this sense that I'm missing something important. This feeling that life is passing me by and I'm approaching the end and I'll get there without having done what I came here to do. I feel more fully alive in these days of darkness in which everything is magnified like the flare of a dying star. Maybe that's enough. Each day received as a gift, approached with a sense of adventure, spent thoughtfully. Maybe the longing itself is an offering of love meant to be accepted and treasured and explored.

Circumstance

The weekend could have been a disaster. Maybe even should have been. The circumstances for a ruined adventure jumped on like fleas on a dog in summer.

When I opened the card from Walt on Tuesday, birthday morning, the weekend ahead contained all the elements for a perfect romantic getaway. A drive down the Oregon coast on a school day (we both took personal days). Breakfast, our favorite traveling meal, at a new place en route. The promise of all the shopping my heart desired along the way. Things at home left in the capable and loving hands of our favorite critter sitter and her family. Our destination a highly rated bed and breakfast that looked like a European chateau in the website picture.

The first bump in the road happened on Thursday night. Out of the blue we lost water pressure. We're on a well. It was after hours. There was no one to come help us until morning. Which would have delayed our departure by who-knew-how-long. Some time after I went to bed, the pressure returned, so that by the time we left on Friday morning, it was as though nothing had happened.

Our breakfast restaurant, a place Walt found on the internet, was clearly a local fixture, slightly grimy and packed to the door with people who all seemed to know each other. It was a seat-yourself place, depending on people to be honorable. We'd gotten a late start and were both hungry, so leaving wasn't a good option. We resigned ourselves to waiting. Tables emptied with surprising speed, and soon we found ourselves standing alone with just one other couple who had walked in just before us. A table came open. The woman of the couple asked her husband if he'd mind sitting at the bar, and then told us to take the table. That one small act of kindness stayed with me for the rest of the weekend. Plus the breakfast was good.

The drive was fun. We chatted about things we never seem to have time for in our busy day-to-day: retirement, vacations, house needs, school, holidays, family. We shopped. We laughed. We held hands. So when we finally arrived at the bed and breakfast we were in a happy state of mind and looking for the magic to continue.

My first sight of the place was breathtaking. A turret and cedar that glowed in the late afternoon light. It did truly look like something out of a fairy tale. The innkeeper was warm and welcoming, the living room beachy comfortable, the dining room cute and inviting. Walt had reserved the Heather Room for us. The walls were a beautiful shade of purple. We could see the ocean from the windows.

The next morning Walt began the conversation with his disappointment in the room. I was relieved. There was no way I was going to be disappointed with something he'd worked so hard to provide for the sole purpose of pleasing me. There was no one big thing, but so many little things. The bed and pillows were uncomfortable. A strong mildew odor permeated the air. The noise from the highway that separated us from the ocean kept us from hearing the waves crashing. Perhaps things to be expected from a standard mom-and-pop beach motel, but not from a very expensive B&B that promoted itself as a retreat from the cares of the world.

Breakfast that first morning was good, and we set out on our day with good energy and high hopes. Despite my lingering bronchitis and Walt's newly developing sore throat. A long satisfying walk on the beach in mild still air. More shopping. A stop for coffee that turned out to be exceptionally good during which a man with shoe-polish black hair curling around his face struck up a conversation. It was his dog that opened the door. A sweet terrier-sized mutt with huge paws that he told incredible tales about: a mixture of Saint Bernard and corgi, trained by the queen, drug sniffing and recently took down a large man by the throat. I couldn't quite figure the guy out. He was clean and articulate, although his stories were wilder than any a child might tell. He was vain enough to color the mop of hair his hat barely contained, although it might have been a wig. The missing front tooth further complicated the picture. I was enjoying the experience and the dog, although I could feel Walt at my side wanting to get us both away from there. Finally, the point of the conversation became clear: he tried to sell me a necklace made of beads found at some archeological site for a price far below their true value because he needed gas money. I let Walt pull me away, feeling weirdly more alive and richer for the conversation.

The rest of the weekend was much the same. Huge disappointments (our second breakfast of cold and undercooked vegetable hash and over-poached eggs) absorbed, laughed at, moved on from. Delightful surprises (two baldies dancing in the air overhead as we drove home) received with gratitude and awe. The time together an adventure we'll treasure forever, as much because of the challenges as in spite of them.

What better way to start a new year than knowing we can roll with it all, finding love and adventure anywhere we're together. Even in the later years of life, understanding it's possible to achieve new levels of contentment and acceptance and wonder unconnected to circumstance.

All Things Holy

Earth, ocean, air. Every once in a while the elements come together in a way that makes it clear that life is a sacred event to be experienced with wonder and awe. Fall is the time of year where that's most likely to happen for me, and this fall is exploding with all things holy.

Last weekend I was feeling that sense of rightness and ease and joy that comes from physical movement and a choice to release expectations. Exploring Vashon Island with five friends for our second annual retreat at Lavender Hill Farm, we'd been to breakfast, the farmers' market and on a long hike through gorgeous terrain full of fall's glory. We'd finally found Wingehaven Park, a tucked-away beach that was the site of a former estate, and were spread out, each woman engaged in her own reflective communion.

As we walked back toward the stairs that led us to the narrow beach, two things happened simultaneously. I heard a loon cry. A bald eagle flew directly overhead. Both birds are voice of God for me, and to get them both at the same time on a day full of love and laughter and acceptance—it was overwhelming in the best way possible.

We watched the eagle for a long time before making our way back to the cars. Six women (Sandy, Sally, DJan, Jann, Linda), all of a certain age, brought together last year by a desire to meet blog friends whose words spoke to our hearts strongly. Returned to our place this year by some undefinable pull (and a shared spirit of adventure) and joined in a comfortable sisterhood more like that of lifelong friends than internet acquaintances.

Everything glowed last weekend. Even more brilliant by contrast in the sharp gray air, reds and oranges and golds radiated from dying deciduous leaves. The small-town family feel of Vashon infused every interaction (a sign on the trail to the beach said dogs off leash only if they don't bother others). The returned-home ambience of Lavender Hill where the six of us settled in almost like we'd never left. The faces of women who have suffered much and have found ways to live in joy and gratitude, including giving ourselves the gift of time together.

In the week that's followed, gifts have continued to swirl around me like leaves blown away to make room for next year's buds. An abundance that I'm so grateful for—both for its presence and for my ability to recognize it.

Yesterday was a perfect illustration. A day spent with my brother, Mark, working in his space at an antique mall, cleaning and rearranging everything except the furniture. Five hours of hard work spent in mostly quiet camaraderie reflective of our adult friendship, one of the greatest treasures of my life. A dinner after, arranged by Mark, with our two brothers and their wives. Our fourth annual dinner celebration of my birthday—an accidental tradition that is the only time we're all together in the course of a year. I sat in the midst of people who have known me longer than anyone, so happy to listen to the conversations, so grateful that in spite of odds that might have sent us in an entirely different direction, we love each other. And would do anything for each other. A return home to Walt who hadn't joined me because he wanted to surprise me with the new computer I'm working from right this minute.

I turn 62 on Tuesday. It is a time of life full of loss, so like the autumn I love best. And just like autumn, a time full of bright promise and the flaming, unmistakable glory that leaves no doubt that I live held in the wings of holiness and love. I can hardly wait to see what comes next.