A Still Life…A Life Still

We jumped ship. Left the girls to their own devices, plus a debit card, and retreated to our favorite getaway. It’s our birthday weekend, the first low-key weekend after the run of Christmas and New Years (unless you count Elvis’s birthday as a major holiday, which I do, since it’s also mine).  After a long and difficult Fall – beginning with 6 days in Children’s Hospital, then my aunt’s death, mom’s diagnosis, dad’s Alzheimer’s onset…we needed a little celebratory escape.

 And so we light fires in our Inn room and explore the trails around an old flooded rice field. We watch mergansers and coots, with their short black velvet necks and squeaky-toy sounds, maneuver the pond like skaters in Central Park. We pause as anhingas and herons on awesome swooping wings parade overhead. The sun on the water is outrageous, transforming it into blinding tinfoil. Bits of the pond and creek beds wear thin lacey ice. We walk. Listen. Wonder if our toes will ever thaw. Say little, and walk more.

I think of how much has changed in my family’s landscape since the spring when we last visitied this place, and how much has changed here, amid winter’s candor. The alligators are tucked away, slowed to an enviable minimalist state. The usually rowdy bullfrogs are silent. The wind hums “shush, shush” through the dead reeds. Life is retracted. Dormant. Bracing itself for what comes, as I am too.

Bracing, and embracing, at the same time. And huddling by the fire, thankful for wool socks, a Duraflame husband, another birthday.

~Stephanie

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She was wearing a chic French head wrap the last time I saw her, covering her chemo-detonated hair.  An elegant cane maintained her tall, willowy silhouette.  Even at 80, a widow of three months, deep into her own physical decline and spiritual conciliation, she was salty to the bone.  “Elevate, women”, she barked to our lunch group, gathered to pay her homage.  “Let’s get this conversation out of the ditch!”  (Why were we swapping mad squirrel stories, anyway?)  “What have you been reading?  Thinking?  Or better, still, what have been creating??  We knew her rules:  no twaddle about men, children, or weather.  But we loved to talk about her – especially her tart verbal hand-slaps, affectionately rendered, calling us to higher ground.  Which meant to Linette — Argentinean by birth, French by marriage, and glamorous by nature — living and breathing with style. 

Today, inside her exquisite, stained glass, Catholic church, (wearing snakeskin boots in her honor), I’m recounting my days with Linette, now come to an end.  In the Mass spoken, the melodies we feebly sing, the faces of friends, I look for signs of her.  My eye keeps returning to the colors in a southern window set ablaze by the midday sun.  Amethyst.  Amber.  Cobalt. Crimson. Malachite green.  On fire!  The fingers of a palmetto frond on the other side of the window fan in the wind, rustling the light with its shadow.  All through the service I rest in that light, breaking open the window’s color like popping lids of fresh cans of paint, spilling it all over the interior of the cold church.  Like Linette.  

The light from beyond is always passing by all of us, I suppose.  I want to offer up my colors – specific and intense, sharp and liquid – and hope to become transparent enough that the light will catch and break them open, spill them on the floor, fill my interior, spatter the faces of those I love.  None of us, I imagine, ever see through into another soul as through a clear pane of glass.  How could we?  And yet, we bask in the beam of another’s fiery colors.

 Today, I bask in the old but undimmed glass of that window.  It is a sacrament of sorts, praising the palette of her life.  Startling, specific, elevated.  Her prismatic poem to the light.   Casting its hue on every face that gathers here, loving her.

                                                                                                               Susan

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How ’bout them Cougars! Every now and then I need to surface from deep reflective mode and just call the shots, and last night at the swanky new College of Charleston arena, the shots were falling. Three pointers, right and left. The upshot: #9-ranked mighty Tarheels succumbed to the clear underdog. It was presumed to be a blow-out, more an exhibition match than a real contest—the big kid on the block coming over to the toddlers’ house as a favor, a show of good will. To let the little College of Charleston boys bask in the reflected glow of the ‘Heels’ National Champ glory.

 As a native North Carolinian I learned early on that the world revolves around ACC basketball. I know why the sky is Carolina Blue. So don’t think this major upset isn’t blog worthy, or fitting for an ALS journal. Here’s the thing – it all came down to overtime. In the final minutes, the luck shifted, the momentum switched. The Cougars took chances; small plays, tiny movements (a missed pass, a split-second look in the wrong direction) had major implications. Little things mattered. “Strange things happen in basketball. I don’t know how to explain it,” said Charleston coach Bobby Cremins.

Let’s not read into this that I’m holding out for a last minute beyond-the-paint shot that miraculously swooshes in. Don’t think I’m clinging to weary “life as sport” metaphors or Nike “Just Do It” slogans. I’m simply savoring the thrill of a game well played. The sheer fun of it. The mystery of it. The damn good feeling when an underdog pulls it off. Especially against the Tarheels.

~Stephanie

(your friendly die-hard Blue Devil)

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 On a cold December run, my feet warm to the pavement; slowly they loosen, oblige.  I am aware, for the first time, of my ankles – how they seem to hinge and unhinge, how they pivot me forward.  From the ankles of Hermes sprouted wings, I’m reminded; speeding the messenger of the gods back from the underworld with news for the human one.  I don’t feel the uplift of Hermes’ wings this morning, but my feet do plod on, hinge, unhinge.

Hermeneutics is the work of Hermes; it’s the interpretation of hidden meaning; it’s also the discipline my father taught for years at a seminary.  Which means that he, too, loved the diving down into ancient texts in order to bring up fresh meaning.  He washed words in the underground pools of their original making and made them shine.

Today, even as I run, he is miles away on a surgical bed, his ankle opened, two broken bones being righted after a bad fall. He has always been a messenger from other realms, I think. And now, even now, even as his swift movements cease, he is diving and surfacing.  He is going down to places I have not yet been, and he is rising up with those depths swimming in his eyes.  Even now he is, like Hermes, a boundary crosser, a traveler, a guide to the mysteries beyond.

 And all of those among us who face their own finality and yet rise to praise the day, who fall and yet find grace in their falling, who dwell in the life-and-death, ball-and-socket hinge of every moment — all of these souls are messengers of mysteries we might heed, are they not?  I can’t help but wonder today what the doctor is finding there where two broken bones meet in the swivel of the ankle.  I am just imagining, just imagining, a little spur, there in all of us ready to bloom when our time comes to travel the deep.  A little spur . . . where wings begin.

                                                                                                                      Susan

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Should the “old old long ago” be hard to reconcile,

Should the days ahead hold fear,

We’ll take a cup o’kindness yet,

raise it high and sip it slow.

                         ~

For all I left undone last year,

for gnawing piles that surround me still,

for paths new and yet unknown,

I’ll take a big cup of kindess yet

and bless it, bless it.

                     ~

For my mother’s beauty and courage, my sisters’ rallying force,

for my kids’ whimsy and my husband’s wisdom and love, 

I’ll chug that cup o’kindness yet,

And refill it frequently.

                                ~

For limber acronyms and the healing play of words,

For all that is silent and expressed,

For dreams that haunt and hallow us, and hopes that urge us forth,

I’ll offer cups o’kindness yet,

and drink to all that is.

~stephanie

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If I could stand for anything,

I’d stand in the center of everything;

at the stillpoint of a cross,

where panes of light are squared in darkness.

I’d reach for heaven and also, happily, earth,

 look to the right but also to what some call wrong,

 make room for love and enmity,

kneel down before life and death.

Give me story to hold for a little while,

and I will search out its other, opposing face;

like electricity, I need its currency, too.

Only then does the heart awake,

(in the center of the holding: tense, quivering,)

and burns bright.

This is what my father taught me: 

do not fall easy into the company of like minds.

Go and find the shadow of your bright zeal, and hold it, too.

Do not banish anything;

our hearts are made to hold all four direction.  Practice becoming a fifth.

Only in the center, where all ways meet, can we even begin to feel the aliveness

that is, this day, our truth.

            Susan

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“You know how Christmas is all about intrusion, about welcoming the unexpected into your life,” my friend Lucille said, as preamble to telling how Bert, her husband/our minister, fought off the drunk firefighter from Massachusetts who broke into their second floor bathroom window the night before. Was a great story (dramatically embellished with each retelling — up to 4 intruders now), and an even greater point. Christmas as intrusion — if I did know, I’d forgotten. I’ve been so invested in Christmas as tradition, so caught up doing all the expected things (our homemade cards, decorations just so, George Winston’s “December” on constant rotation, the chaotic Christmas pageant at church) that have become sacred simply because that’s how we do them, that I’d lost sight of this small truth. The unexpected child; the surprising star; magi on an impromptu quest; big guy sneaking down the chimney; the diagnosis that changes everything…and yet, for this Christmas, didn’t really change anything, except that mom’s speech was slurred, her carols silent. 

As for tradition, this year Claire was uncertain about the pageant. She’s nine and a half, on her way out the door of youthful unself-consciousness. It’s not cool anymore to be an angel wearing a garland of gold stars, but she did it. Probably her last gig with the heavenly hosts.  She glanced around somewhat indifferently as shepherds came and went, as Wise Men plopped down fake gold and faux frankensense. But I watched her, more sure than ever that she was a divine being. That we all dance in holy light.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, unexpected break-ins of peace and good will, and if we’re lucky, shy glances from ambivalent angels.

~ stephanie

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If you don’t stand for something, my father used to wryly intone, you’ll fall for anything.

* 

This Christmas, I am weaving a blanket for my father’s legs. 

For his long legs that walked to work (past the peony bushes, through the gate, while I watched from the back door, small hands waving). 

Legs that paced the classroom while the scholar taught, pausing, praising an idea with full-bodied exclamation.

Legs that pulled my young body through the swimming pool like a raft parting still waters.

Legs that traveled the continents, bent to indulge the neighbor’s dog, stood firm in fields of conflict.

Legs that now, sooner with each day, are retiring from their labor.  They are tucking in, falling asleep, turning out the lights, shutting down.

As I weave, each thread on the loom holds a memory of this pilgrim life.  Each shuttle passes through them as a prayer of love and letting go.

This, then, is my Christmas wish: 

to bless these legs that touched the earth,

that ran the good race;

that stood for something,

and fell, at last, for love alone.

                                                                                                             -susan

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After a long day of meetings crowned by the chaos of Dulles, I’m happy just to sit, captive in the cramped cabin of this United Airlines jet. We’re stuck waiting on the airport runway, for what we’re not sure. The drone of the mighty engine lulls me, drowning out echoes of the day. I’m headed home, grateful, tired, resigned to my narrow seat, buckled in, the tray table in it’s upright and locked position. I glance at the tattered inflight magazine, the patch of vermillion sunset over the left wing.

After a hot and stuffy 20 minutes, we finally taxi for take off and my stomach drops, as it always does that moment when the plane lurches, impossibly, skyward. As it did two and a half months ago when I picked up the phone to hear my sister say “The neurologist says ALS.”

Soon the plane’s steep climb levels off, the shrill engine screech gives way to a dull hum, and my anxiety dissipates. I settle in, relax, relinquish the control that I never had in the first place. I read the paper at  24,000 feet as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Forget the wonder and awe that I can wake up in SC, go to DC for a meeting then be home for supper. Forget the stunning reality of how much can change in a day.

I’m headed home, soaring into the night’s darkness. Below me, lights of the city sing like an over-the-top holiday display. Onward at jet speed, above and beyond these dazzling grounded galaxies, these million little Bethlehems.  A twinkling wonderland of awe, worry, hope.

~ stephanie

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The enormous canna leaves must be taken down – a whole bed of them wrinkled and brown where their bright orange lily faces used to shout.  I cut quickly, vigorously, clearing to the bare mulched earth. Piles of elephantine leaves are hauled into the pick-up truck, which is hauled to the dump.   Back on my knees, snipping away, I see a surprise:  right under the torched canna remains, daffodils sending up their leggy green hope.  I consider how little I do – nothing really – to make thing grow.  All my energy in the garden is spent clearing away what is tired, pulling out the last season spent, editing.  With just a little tenderness, life will grow it’s own next idea from roots in the dark earth.  Even in the final clearing job, which is called dying, I sense there is something underfoot, emerging.  I see it shining in my father’s face.

We never do create the new, of course, but are wise to be vigilant in making room for it.  Only clear, prune, pull, lop, sheer, haul, compost – let it go – what has already gone from it’s living.  Take it back to the ground, raw and clean.  Empty yourself of everything not growing, go naked to the ground.  This is my new prayer.

And lo, the daffodils, from that bleak winter ground, rise and praise.

                                                                                                               – susan

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