A Still Life…A Life Still

I leave 2010 behind me on the black top, pushing the Prius accelerator to 80 as I cross the state line into North Carolina, my home turf. It’s my second trip in as many weeks, but they feel worlds apart. Last week, five days before Christmas, I drove the 5 hours from Charleston to High Point in quiet sadness, listening to Dave Grisman’s acoustic Christmas songs in perpetual somber repeat.  We were in crisis mode, my mother fighting for breath with pneumonia, my sisters and I unsure of what each day would bring, and if Christmas would happen at all.  Today’s drive was so very different. Hopeful and mundane. Just ticking down the miles, absorbed in a book on tape rather than worry.

My mother has once again shown her steely resolve: She’s rebounded unbelievably well from pneumonia, and rallied through a fabulous Christmas. And now I find myself spending  the last hours of the first decade of a new century, appropriately, on the road. Watching for what’s ahead and checking my mirror for all that trails behind. Staying alert, ready. Making no assumptions about what might come at me from unexpected angles. Prepared for lane changes and hard turns, but  buckled in, with eyes wide open — taking in the scenery, the tacky signs, the sun breaking through December clouds. 

I welcome the New Year with a renewed sense of journey, and I’m grateful to begin it with this trip “home.”

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We put our hands into one another’s around the Christmas table and lower our heads over roast and cinnamony apples.  Out of stillness, my father’s voice begins to light the stable lanterns, conjuring cold desert air, animals warm breath, earthy spices.

To an open house in the evening . . .

We all join silently in the cadence, warming to his words, tracing the verse of G.K. Chesterton in our collective family memory.

To an open house in the evening,
Home shall all men come.

And it always feels, in that nesting stable of words, that I am home.

To an older place than Eden,
And a taller town than Rome. . .

That was last Christmas, and a lifetime of Christmas’ before.

To the end of the way of the wandering star
To the things that cannot be, and, yet, are. . .

This year, the words still light my father’s mind but no longer flow easily from his tongue.  To my surprise, I find they have passed over into me.  I simply stumbled on them there, alive, and spoken forever in my father’s elegant voice.

To the things that cannot be, and yet are . . .

My father has given me this Christmas gift, now and forever.  Not only the mystery of poetry, but the more exquisite poem which is his life.  No matter where I may be, my feet will turn to this stabled memory at Christmas, and find my way home.

To the place where God was homeless,
And all men are at home.

Memory mangers the wayfaring heart.  In a candled moment, now and always, here and anywhere under the wandering stars, I am at table with with my father, hand in hand, blessing the feast set before us. At home with the things that cannot be, and yet are.

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His voice crackles with warmth, syllables settling into each other like embers; laughter sparking, suddenly.  I turn off the lamp, leaning into the phone as one would lean toward a blaze in winter.

My father’s friend has called unexpectedly on this cold night.  His short, measured sentences carry the length of their almost sixty years on the path together.  These two men are not colleagues, sportsmen, not even neighbors.  They are friends.  Memory and history have braided them together; a thoughtful tension between them is tinder for their fire.

Over the years, as they unwrapped their ideas, flayed open their failures, mused on their successes, they became more forthright, calling each other by their true names.  But, you are so different!, I exclaim, and he roars with laughter, so true it is.  That’s what makes it so interesting, his voice glowed.  I felt the  boundless night open.  Two uncommon souls, seeing each other with clear eyes, whole and against a wide sky, as Rilke put it.

The Solstice darkness bands across the heavens and holds us tight for these three days, gripping the sun.  It is the beginning of our winter.  Just now, the bells toll for Stephanie’s mother – pneumonia that can’t be cured, her lungs have given out, hospice is settling in.  I hear the news as though I am her mother’s daughter – so piercing and entwined have our stories grown.

What I need in the winter that is ahead is not merriness, exactly, nor even light, for I am content to live a while in the dark.  What I need is warmth.  The ways we bank against one another.  The way we huddle in under this cold band of darkness.

In my old friend’s voice, logs stack with memory.  He throws another one on the fire, full of feeling and affection. I think of you all every day. This is how the campfire is fueled.  We lean toward the fire of one another.   And there, against the great night sky, we see each other as we are, as we really are, lit up, at last, by love.

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Christmas relentlessly carries us back. It is a manger of memory, a stable of family and church traditions, a place, as Bethlehem was, to which we return to be counted among our people, our tribe, the ones who shaped us.

This past Sunday we finally pulled out the ornaments and decked the tree in a garland of storytelling, recounting the provenance of each keepsake. “I made this in Mrs. Vorheeses’ kindergarten,” I said, tenderly lifting up a round disk embedded with a small picture of Mary and Jesus. I still remember cutting that picture out, then baking it in a bubbly clear resin that surely was highly toxic. “We know. You say that every year,” my daughters replied. Teenagers clearly don’t understand nostalgia’s undertow.

My deepest Christmas memories transport me to my grandparents and to my aunt and uncles in Winston-Salem, NC—all stalwart Moravians, my distant tribe. My Aunt Janet and her sons baked the thinnest, spiciest Moravian ginger cookies, using cookie cutters that my great uncle Pete, the tin smith at Old Salem, crafted by hand. Though I haven’t had a homemade Moravian cookie in years, Christmas will always taste like a crisp ginger explosion; it smells like hand-dipped beeswax candles that we lit at the traditional Christmas Eve Lovefeast; and it looks like the Moravian star.

Each December, the Moravian star hung on our porch over our front door, and on my grandparents’ porch, and my aunt’s and uncles’, offering us the blessing of light as we came and went. It still hangs over Calvary Moravian Church’s portico, and along the streets of Winston Salem. Historians claim this 26-point Great Stellated Rhombicuboctahedron originated as a geometry class project for Moravian students in 1830s Germany, fitting, I suppose, as it shines for those of us struggling to understand the measure of things, to seek where lines intersect, to navigate hard angles and all things obtuse.

As I was thinking about this post and Googling “Moravian Stars”, I was stunned to learn that the world’s largest Moravian Star, a 31-foot, 3400-pound aurora, is lit every advent and Christmas season on top of the North Tower of Wake Forest’s Baptist Medical Center. Where my mother gets her ALS care. Where my friend Stuart has been getting daily radiation therapy for a brain tumor for the last 2½ months. Where Ann—married to my cousin Bill who keeps the Moravian traditions alive through Salem Candle Company—is battling end-stage breast cancer.

May this star’s light bring clarity, peace, resilience and 26+ points of holy razzle-dazzle to each of them, and to all of us who know darkness, who crave warmth, calm and meaning in this harried advent season.

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We’re either nearing or have just passed our blog’s 1st anniversary (the date is foggy). What is certain, however, is that after a year of A Life Still, Susan and I are still learning. Still feeling our way as daughters, long-distance caretakers, bloggers, blog-partners, ponderers, acronym-benders, widget-users (actually, that’s long gone by the wayside), and creators of these little tokens of thought and image that somehow mean something to us, and hopefully to you, our readers, whoever you are.

When we first considered launching into the unknown frontier of the blogosphere, I contacted my friend Elizabeth, who’s an old hand and revered rock-star in the blog world. Elizabeth posts with passion and poignancy at A Moon, Worn as if it had been a Shell, about her rich and daunting life with her daughter, Sophie, who has severe childhood epilepsy, and about her myriad interests ranging from fiery to funny to intellectual to artsy, political, spiritual, poetic, personal. She’s my role model for how a blogger can make connections with the wider world. For how leaving little alms on a cyber altar can be day-brightening, heart-opening or heart-breaking for those of us who pause there for a moment to soak them in, before moving on to Google’s endless horizon or CNN.com’s latest scoop.

Elizabeth opened the door, and helped show us the way toward the power and reward of the blog. And while we have a way to go to develop the type of community she’s established through her blog, we’re at the threshhold. So, thank you, Elizabeth, for your door. For your voice, your support, your faith in the give-and-take of writing and reading, in the value of friendship, and in the possibility of elevating a child’s — or parent’s — suffering and challenges into a worthy endeavor.

(the image above is Elizabeth’s actual front door in LA, and the portal to her blog.)

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His hands reach for the running water; fall short; strain to inch forward.  I nudge his elbow, easing his sleeves across the sink counter, wrists dangling over the wide basin; until his fingers find play under the faucet.  Here the soap is delivered into the pocket of his two palms; a spicy lather brews, loosening the remains of the day.

Drenching, warm, timeless, slow:  this moment fills.  I am waiting for Mohammed in the winding streets of Fez to make his long, deliberate ablutions before each meal: water and prayer as one.  I am standing beside a six year old in the Atlanta airport who stretches tip-toe toward the lavatory stream, singing.  I am touching moistened fingers to a baby’s head while the baptismal rite gurgles from my mouth; kissing my husband’s chlorine-pickled flesh, still damp from his morning swim.  I am ten, standing beside my father in church, belting out, Come Thou Fount of Every blessing . . .  I am splashing in the sink with my father’s hands.

His fingers do not bend of their own mind anymore.  They don’t recognize the pen or remember how to cradle it.  They balk at the toothpaste cap, the fork, the elusive piece of paper.  They are retiring from the business of snapping, curling, clipping, rubbing, buttoning, squeezing, holding on.  They are innocent again, just being.  I find it a moment’s joy to hold them under the river of light.  Water and prayer as one.

My father nods.  I turn off the faucet and take his soft hands in a fresh towel, flossing between fingers.  The neighbor has newly manicured his rounded nails; I admire her gift of tenderness.  Then the moment is over.  There are teeth to be brushed, a bed to be negotiated, rituals of the night.  But now and then, as I flick my fingers under a faucet, I remember those hands cupped beneath waterfall.  Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

And so, I lather and splash; remembering, I sing.

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There are two kinds of families: à la cavity stuffers, and à la carte ones. We are the latter — stuffing, or rather, “dressing”  is a side dish in our Thanksgiving tradition. Pepperidge Farms, with added sauted celery and onion, moistened with chicken broth, then baked till just crunchy on top. The turkey is simply a foil– an excuse to serve gussied up bread crumbs, elevated by the elegance of sage.

Dressing will be one thanksgiving staple that my mom, our traditional dressing maker, will be able to eat this year. She’ll take the tiniest of bites, and “chew” with the concentration of a determined athlete. This is work, sheer will-power. Her tongue and swallowing muscles are on strike, in total disregard that this is the season we gather around the table. That this is the meal, more so than others, during which we taste memory, feast on stories of holidays past, flash back to the familiar and beloved smells and tastes that tell us who we are and from what tables and dishes we came from. Remembrances that melt over us like butter on steam-fluffy crescent rolls. Gratitude that fills us like seconds of oyster casserole and perfectly browned dressing, not too moist, not too dry.

In her honor, I will savor slow food this holiday. Bites taken with care and intention, with risk, with love, and yes, with thanksgiving.

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Is it true?  Is it fair?  Will it build friendship and good will?  Will it benefit all?

The Four Way Test,
Rotary International

Bending over his enormous plank of a desk, now heightened five inches to accommodate his power wheelchair, my father presses his pen in quiet concentration – slow, deliberate marks fill the page.  It takes an hour for him to inscribe a book he wrote six years ago, this copy going to a library for his fellow Rotarians.  It is a small volume reflecting on the Four Way Test, a moral compass used by his colleagues all over the world.  When I googled the book, my screen first beamed news from Madras, where the Rotarians had been so moved by his writing, they had received permission to translate and publish it in India.  I had no idea.

I decided to read it myself, differently now.  Is it true? This slowly changing life of his – words crumbling in his mouth, hands crawling across the page, legs out like a light.  Yes, the bare truth of it is hard to miss.

Has it built friendship, goodwill? Oh, friends and former foes alike line up to sit with him in the light of life while it lasts.  Love thrives in the vulnerable places.  And yes, it has been beneficent, in the way of blessing, to many who witness in him what it means to die as you have lived, and in faith.

But, is it fair? This one stops me.

I can say, no, life never promised to be fair.  But he would go further – I have heard him do so lately.  He said to me that, of course, we all must die, that it is natural, that knowing so invigorates him with life.  And for his slow diminishment, he has no self-pity.  Except for a few, death is usually difficult for the body to bear, he said: we can expect that.  And that while he yet lives, he swims in an ocean of gratitude, buoyed by all who hold  him in love,  bearing witness to the abundance of what he has been given.  His words.  In the final calculation, he would say:  yes, life has been more than fair.

It’s all in how you hold the compass, I guess.  Calculating the longitude of truth, the latitude of fairness, the wide circle of friendship and global community.  And above all, it’s about pointing to that magnetic north, is it not?  To that one polestar beyond life and death around which all other circumstances find their bearing.  I want to remember that.

When the official Rotarian received the book for their library, he sat with my father to read his inscription aloud.  The elder gives this book every week to every speaker that comes through town.  But now, he couldn’t make out these last few words – my father’s careful hand is too shaky yet.  He stumbled over the lines.  No matter, my father quietly brushed it off.  We will have it typed and pasted. I’ll make my mark at the end.

And so he has.  Even on my most difficult days, I want to quietly swim in this much gratitude.  I want to laugh with this much joy.

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There are so many gifts

Still unopened from your birthday.

There are so many hand-crafted presents

That have been sent to you by God.

The Beloved does not mind repeating

“Everything I have is also yours.”

Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend

If we break into a sweet laughter

When your heart complains of being thirsty

When ages ago

Every cell in your soul

Capsized forever

Into this infinite golden sea….

There are so many gifts, my dear,

Still unopened from your birthday.

O, there are so many hand-crafted presents

That have been sent to your life

From God.

a little bday note from Hafiz ~
hoping you had a lovely day

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It was questionable judgment at best: a 10 hour slog up dreadful I-95; 9+ hours of walking and standing, then a 9 hour return trek to cap it all off. All in the name of restoring sanity, and/or fear, as only Jon Stewart and Colbert’s cronies can do.

Surely there are saner ways of spending a weekend (lending moral support for my daughter’s college application deadline, boosting local get-out-the-vote efforts and  cheering at Claire’s soccer game among them).  But this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I jumped at it.

To be on the Washington mall with throngs of costumed, sign-waving, middle-aged, open-minded, like-minded, optimistic, fed-up, concerned, committed, creative, fun, passionate, funny, spunky, mildly insane people was just the kind of Saturday I needed. Meeting the legendary and genuinely kind Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers and posing with Tony Bennett was icing on the Halloween cupcake.

The take home message from my political activism binge weekend was not that the Left is right (or sane), and the Glenn Beckers are all wrong, but that being with your peeps is comforting, and necessary. It is the teary, tingly feeling of gratitude and assurance that I felt last spring at the ALS walk, surrounded by my mother’s posse. It is the sense of grounding at-homeness I felt the weekend before last when old family friends who had known my dad as a young man, and me as a young girl, gathered to raise a glass in his memory. Being in DC, hanging out with 220,000 kindred souls from all over the country and all walks of life, to raise a sign and a song in memory and/or in dreams of better days,  was wildly uplifting. The intrepid October sunshine cascading on the Capital’s rotunda — the Rally’s inspiring backdrop — didn’t hurt either.

Where two or more are gathered, the good Lord says, is where the holy becomes amplified. Perhaps a humble blog might count, too, as an offering of common ground, of shared sanity, of sacred presence. We’ll call it our small, quiet rally. Who knows, maybe Stephen, or Tony, will show up?

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