Author: mallorygaylegraham

folk musician, songwriter, blogger and an excellent cook.

When The Saints Come Marching In

We gathered in jackets and blankets laid over our knees, a woodstove crackling in the old shed that was decorated with fairy lights and warm, small illuminated globes. These women around the the table, scattered from Los Angeles to London, had become a quick-made family to me in our short five days together. We walked the Isle of Iona, explored seaglass on the shore, inked billowy blues on big soft sheets of watercolor paper for hours in the afternoon, stitched books, shared of ourselves over little afternoon cakes and tea.

This night, we gathered for our second to last dinner together, a surprise setting on The Green Shed croft– a mystery barn where swallows make nests in the rafters, sneaking in where the drafts come through– chilly and magnificent. Pauline had outdone herself this night– radicchio salad, roasted potatoes on beet puree, pickled shallots with lavender, buckwheat tabbouleh, and chickpea tagine. I didn’t mourn the end of this bookbinding retreat to Scotland yet, because I had no concept of time except the moment I was in. And in this moment, as we licked our plates of rhubarb pavlova with coconut cream, we were holding a space of jokes, stories, and songs; one each after the other sharing. Kristin told a joke. My teacher shared an old, heartbreaking Scottish lullaby. I sang a short rendition of “Oh Shenandoah” as I shook with stage fright. And then my teacher’s husband, John, spoke of the particulars of the island we sat on– some history and lore. He’s been running this hostel for 30 years, right on the sea, with Hebridean sheep in the fields and travelers streaming in and out. John loves the travelers. “They are part of this island’s story as much as we are,” he asserts, “Iona would not be the same without them– without you.”

The radical welcome to such a secluded place is no small gift. I feel like an intruder most places, sometimes even in my own body. To be not only welcomed, but fed, comforted, and assured of my role in a foreign place gave me an overwhelming sense of responsibility. It made me care for this place as I would my home. To welcome the stranger, I realized, was not only to benefit the stranger, but to benefit oneself. It is an invitation to care for a place mutually, and to let it become a home– whether for a night or a lifetime. It is also to be able to accept the gifts of the outside world to the benefit of one’s home.

John noted one such exceptional visit. He’d recently divorced, was turned inward, unsteady. A group of Tibetan monks had made their way to Iona, looking for a short stay. The first order of business was to negotiate a price. They would trade two nights at the hostel for free in exchange for a cleansing of the place– of the barn we were sitting in. John quickly agreed. What loss was there to accept a gift of spirit and experience?

On the night of the cleanse, he gathered with the monks, unsure how the evening would progress. He’d expected prayers or smoke, incense and droning. But what took place instead was a lot of noise. The monks lugged in drums, instruments and bodies and began playing, smacking, singing, yelling until the place was cacophonous, ripping and slapping against the metal slabs of wall. “It was nearly unbearable, the noise,” he remembered, but then allowed himself to be taken.

This step, he learned, was to gain the attention of the gods. Some of those gods, the very good ones, were extremely high up and required a significant amount of sound to draw their attention this far below. I looked at the ceiling as he recounted, imagining the gods looking through, visualizing the wide sky of Iona above.

Once the noise has been made and the attention has been gained, the monks begin the next step of luring the gods in. Here, they offer hot, fragrant rice, spiced smells, and quiet their cymbals to beautiful, tranquil sounds– the sound of music rather than noise. The gods drift in, though I’m not sure if they come all at once or one at a time, but either way, by the time this portion is over, several gods are culminated in the room. Their expanse and number shoves the gargoyles from their dark corners and pushes them out. Many of the gargoyles leave simply for lack of space– but most flee in fear. No evil can prevail in the fullness of good, not even in the crevice of a shadowy barn on an island in Scotland. The monks hold these great, good gods for some time, as the gargoyles make a cloud above, waiting for the gods to leave. The gods enjoy themselves, resting and eating and smelling and listening. The gargoyles grow impatient. And then, at last, the monks light the incense, allowing the smoke of the tranquility within to lift up to the dark cloud– and the gargoyles scatter. It takes patience, this part. Patience to wait out the evil above, and patience to be hospitable to the gods within, and patience to know when the darkness above is at its final thread to deliver the last blow.

When the ceremony is complete, the gods happy and the gargoyles exorcised, the gods lift themselves back up to the sky.

The quiet space they leave behind is called Peace.

It is now the responsibility of the ones left behind, the monks and John in this case, to fill the space with goodness, and to let it go.

To me, this sounded worth more than two nights. It was a steal.

Last Saturday, as has been frequent in the last year, the gargoyles descended. Another murder in Minneapolis, sanctioned by our federal government. The amount of fear, overwhelm, and sickness that filled me as I sat stock still watching a replay of Alex Pretti be shot again and again in my hotel room in New Orleans paralyzed me.

“What do we do? What do we do?” I kept asking my Someone. He sat across from me on the bed, glued to his own phone, shaking his head. He left for a while, but I hardly noticed until his return twenty minutes later. I was still scrolling. Our roommate, Alice, came back and I continued to scroll. My instinct was to curl up like a wounded animal and let the gargoyles take me. But we were attending a folk conference, for chrissake. I was an elevator away from empathy, and we set out to find it.

In the hotel lobby, I dodged from the front desk to the bar, looking for a face– and there she was. Lisa, one bite left on her plate. I walked toward her and into her arms and let myself be overcome with the weight of it. She, in turn, stood and waited with me and my Someone to hear the unravel that brought us to her. We didn’t really have words, so she told us about her exorcism that morning– how she intentionally went inward to work out the ways that her history and her family story had held her back, and how they don’t hold her back as much anymore since she began to walk toward it.

“This is the work,” she said, “that I believe we can do, and it will ripple out again.” She was right. To make this strange place of our lives a home is a way forward.

But then, as she finished, a trumpet started, then a trombone. A big brassy, cacophony began by the concierge desk and we were startled and excited by the sound. It turned into a song. Then voices began.

Oh when the saints go marching in–
Oh when the saints go marching in–

They marched around the lobby, growing louder and with more number, casting out all other sounds. Up the escalator and I could still hear them. They kept singing, holding that sonic space for a long time. Long after is polite for a public sing-along. And I realized they were keeping the space– they were holding the good gods here until the gargoyles fled. The harmonies split further, wedging into the little microcosmic pieces of my split up heart, and I let them hold space there.

When they finally ended, I felt the Silence– I felt peace. It was time to fill the space with goodness. We said goodbye to Lisa, and stopped to talk to Katie– a Minneapolis native. We consoled and cried and heartened. Then, we retreated to our room and wrote a song.

I’m not naive enough to believe a song will change anything. I’m not stupid enough to believe that this will be the only cleanse needed. These gargoyles, with their covered faces and unlimited budget and ammunition and self loathing, are fast and with unrestrained resources. But I have to believe that every incense lit, every vote, every word of dissent, every warm meal shared, every life now on the line, every banging trash can drum will do its part in the process until the oppressive cloud above us is one day scattered.

And so, I will write songs to lure the good gods in and keep them here. And I will try to hold them here as long as I can, til there is only space left for Peace.

And On Day 9, She Rested.

Day 2

I woke up here, on this island. I have no history, no identity, just a sense of belonging here only and always, and four incisions bruising on my abdomen. I hear everyone telling me to take it easy, to rest, to not worry. But I don’t worry. There’s no where to go here. The moon was full last night, and made the snowscape bright and reflective like glass. I awoke every three hours to alarms, telling me to take another pain pill. Tylenol, then ibuprofen, then Tylenol. They are the waves on the shoreline, and I am listening to them come in before sleep. At the 3AM, I willed myself to stay awake longer. The moonlight was too bright to close my eyes on, and it was too strange to see the night so bright that real, firm shadows formed on the ground. I spend the following day watching the same shadows from the sun. It was 1 degree in the morning, so cold that the hinges on the inside of the front door were frosted. My mother called. I don’t know how she found me here, or how I knew she was my mother. She said she made gingersnaps, and yesterday pizzelles. “It’s not Christmas til the pizzelles are made,” she said, and I wondered what was Christmas and neither judged nor resonated, only accepted that somewhere off this island, there was Christmas, but it didn’t effect me. Here was only wind that smacked snow to the side of every tree, slathered like white mud, making every tree a birch. I can’t imagine a prettier island, to exist in the center of a wood of cold birches. The winter day is closing its dense, blue eyelid. Here comes sleep, then alarm, sleep, alarm, and I hope for the moon to break up the night.

I love it here. But I get the nagging sense that I will have to leave someday, and it grieves me.

Day 3

There are prints that lead beneath the house in the snow– they look too large to be a squirrel but it’s too hopeful that they belong to a rabbit. I’m pleased to know that there is other life on the island, even if I am still too slow to catch it. I watch icicles like television, the prisms casting color before they frost over like teeth, dripping with hungry thoughts of spring.

Spring is a new idea on the island. I’m grateful it does not come here. I can’t imagine the chaos of vines and leaves whipping themselves around, mussing up the simplicity of a white blanket and footprints and the skeletal tan beech leaves I could count.

Day 4

It’s my fourth day on this island and the strangeness has worn off to normalcy. In fact, it is only strange that I ever believed in a world beyond the snowy sea. Complicated schedules and maps and to do lists have distilled down to baseless things. The only reigning importance is this: nourishment, bowel movements, deep breathing, sleep, and an occasional exploration of the perimeter. I am bodily reduced to these touchstones as before my mind was strengthened to perform complexities which on this island, I cannot fathom. Text messages come in like foreign postcards in the claws of gulls, indecipherable to this small world I inhabit. One ship has perched on shore, but brought no new news, only supplies to further my wait here. I will not starve. I will wait til the waters dry up and the boundaries soften and what happened here will little matter except that I knew only this for a time, and this was my home, and I was content to survive without curiosity and with contentment. The bright white out my window will sear like a memory blanket behind my eyes as I fall asleep and wish for the deep rest I have found here alone.

Day 5

And now time has snapped back into place. The island was an illusion. These things exist, in no particular order of importance and with equal certainty–

Monday
my body
my neighbor’s house
Europe
schools
seasons
music

Also, I have become aware of
schedules.
lists.
tasks.
Monday (again).

The realization is as shocking as it is normal, and I already mourn for day 1, 2, 3, 4 of a floating poet of no consequence who nearly lived a life into oblivion.

The biggest, most prominent awarenesses may be:
– a ticking clock

which leads to:
– irritations
– reality
– change
-clarity
-mournfulness
-regret
-longing

Oh, and look at that. Dashes. I have structured my lists, conditioned from the Before Time. I am not gently unraveling but forcibly conforming. Heart rate, higher. Motivation, momentous. Productivity, impossibly expected.

The island was not an illusion. And I was trying to fight to leave it too soon. My body not ready, my mind pushing forward. All of this time can’t be wasted. I began to panic. I pushed harder, walked longer, wore myself to pain, balled up my will and tried again. I exhausted myself on Day 6, walking outside in -12 degrees for over a mile, collapsing the rest of the day. That night, I told my Someone I had to write a book. I scanned the internet (it existed suddenly on the island), and realized much was expected of me. I should rest so that I could write a song. I should rest so I could write a book. I should rest so I could do more more more more more more more more more more more. I should rest, because rest means I can be better, bigger. There will be something to come of this rest. And if there isn’t, well, perhaps I did not take my rest seriously enough. I began making ridiculous goals. If I couldn’t sit upright to be productive in making books– hard as I’d tried– I would instead read books. An impossible number. I would finish at least one a day. I would consume books to prove that I am filling my well for future creativity. People would look at my online ledger and wonder how– HOW?– could anyone read this many books in such a short amount of time? Then, I made possible but fraught goals. I would do yoga every day. I would practice piano every day til my abdomen hurt. I would complete one mundane task a day. Suddenly my days of rest were so regimented, so riddled with expectation, I wished for the days before I rested so I could rest again.

And that’s when the spiraling began. Because I couldn’t– I physically couldn’t, not even to account for my mental capacity– hold up the weight of these expectations. I’m not even allowed to lift 5 pounds, let alone the hundreds of pounds of self imposed standards. I fell flat. It snowed that day, usually one of my favorite days. But as it piled up outside, I felt the weight pressing down on me. I became bitter, remembering when a snow day meant rest, and now a snow day means fighting the rest. I gave up, at last, and put myself to bed. A two hour nap. When I woke up, I made hot chocolate– with help lifting the maple syrup. I began a puzzle. I justified it as a snow day, but I worried that it would be the same tomorrow, the next day. And I still hadn’t written that novel that was supposed to come from all of this rest. I wished for exhaustion and got it, sleep without rest.

The next day was the same. I now lived on the shoreline of the island, unsure how to leave, unsure how to rest. I would leave. I would leave tomorrow.

I woke up angry, annoyed. I shoved myself into the small boat and pushed myself from the island I loved. Not because I wanted to leave, but because I felt like I had to. I didn’t deserve this place. I’d already overstayed. It was Day 8, for godssake. I couldn’t check out forever. Once out at sea, the waves grew more harsh. My body couldn’t handle it. My thoughts became the thrashing waves, a ship of haze– unrelenting, nonsensical, and from every direction. I became disoriented. I became a ball of defiant energy, a little work force of resistance, of fear, of small brutal efforts. And then I became a mouse at the bottom of a boat, running back and forth.

And then, another boat appeared. Lindsey. She tethered her boat to mine, lobbing over a bag of roasted eggplant tomato soup and fresh squeezed orange juice and a small gift wrapped prettily in orange paper. Then she sat with me in the middle of the sea while I tried to pretend my tears were just the water sloshing around. She’d been here before, in this exact part of the sea. It was a little and a long way to go, she said. She had a map, and showed it to me. I couldn’t make sense of it, but I love to see maps, and it made me feel calm. She stayed very still while I sometimes raged and punched at the water. When she left, I was still drifting, but toward somewhere. I let myself be pushed around as I did the gentlest yoga in the middle of my boat. I let myself think–

Who am I if I am not helping? Contributing? Performing?

I let myself think–

What happens to me when I am reduced to I AM, I AM, I AM.

I let myself think–

People are allowed to be not useful, but I am not allowed to be not useful.

I let my ideologies be pushed around. I thought how I believed somewhere that I would heal better than anyone else. I thought how I was in competition, to be better at getting better faster than anyone else. I thought of the merit of my own body, and then the merit of having a body unable to serve. I remembered a foreign postcard text my friend Dani sent me on Day 2, when she said, “I hate when reality screws up my positive thinking plans. And all that stuff that happens to other people certainly won’t happen to ME. Yep, reality bites.”

And then I thought, I am not special to be here in this floating sea alone and capable. But I am special to be in this floating sea where other people have been floating before and know the place that I am floating.

I thought– what is the lesson?

I thought– this is the lesson.

I thought– because there is no lesson. At last.

Day 9

This morning, I awoke in the world I left before surgery. I thought, “I would like to go to a bookstore soon.” And it seemed strange that I would want to go, but also that I remembered what a bookstore is. How decadently normal. My Someone has set up two bird feeders on a shepherd’s hook in front of my bedroom window, and when he delivered coffee to me in bed, he opened the curtains and I was shocked and amazed to see it. All day I’ve stayed in this room, even though I don’t need to stay in this one space. I’m well enough that I could leave. But I am choosing to stay because so far I have seen chickadee, titmouse, nuthatch, bluejay, and a hairy woodpecker, and I can’t stand to miss a minute. I read a poem this morning that said True creation is always purposeless, without ulterior motive.* It reminded me of an island I used to live on. I read more of the poem and, for the first time in months, I felt the poem touch my heart. True rest is also always purposeless. They have always been attached, twinned, but necessarily separated. Rest and creation cannot see one another, or the spell is broken, and they both disappear. I do not rest to create, or I do not create. I do not create so I may rest, or I will never rest. Today I remember my island, and I rest.

And here, by accident, create.

*”Fugue,” by Hayan Charara from These Trees, Those Leave, This Flower, That Fruit

But What Did God Say When You Told Him I Was Forgiven?

What exactly did you tell God when you told him I was forgiven?

When I got your letter, I ripped it open like a Band Aid from a furry patch of skin and read it aloud to the room. I read it without emotion and with authority, to blaze the new path you had forged from your silence several states away to my home in New Hampshire. And as my Someone and my friends staying with me that weekend dropped their jaws in horror at its conclusion, I did not. I simply refolded the letter, tucked it back in its envelope, laid it in a drawer and said, “Now then, that’s over– let’s begin our day.” And we did. It was a glorious fall day and the apples were ripe for picking and the pumpkins were big for carving and we spent an entire day thinking of the present moment, reveling in the choice to enjoy the people who have overlapped our timelines, because it is only ever a short while. I forgot about the letter for the following days, but my Someone did not. Every time he opened the drawer, he became agitated. And his agitation at last sent me alone to my studio to respond. Not because I wanted to respond. Not even because I needed to. But because it was a courtesy, like closing the door against the cold when you are the last one in.

The last I heard from you, God had told you not to be my friend anymore. He had told you I made you a bad mother. He told you I caused you to stumble. He told you that my mere existence and beliefs were a mockery to you and yours, and that I must be extricated from your life so that your faith may thrive. It was an incredible feat, I felt, having so much power over you and God. And I had no inclination I was exerting it.

But in the two years since, evidently you call the shots again with God. You’re pushing back. Because before you were helpless– there was nothing to be done. What God said was authority, and you must obey for your salvation on Earth and in Heaven. So it was a real relief, reading the words– “I forgive you… I have repeated these words to myself and to God.” But not because I was forgiven, because we all know that forgiveness is for the one giving it, not the one it is being forced upon. I was relieved because it seems that God has crawled out of the Room of Petty Arguments and has joined the lively discussion of Loving One Another.

But I am curious– how did he take it?

Because the God you told me about was furious. He wasn’t going to let this go. And if it was merely a matter of letting him know, could this have been resolved earlier? Perhaps I could have written down an explanation, a doctor’s excuse of sorts, that allowed you to miss class on Judgement that day?

What exactly did he say? Did he question your authority like I questioned his when you first told me I was banished? Did he grasp for his last semblance of disgusted dignity, clutch his pearls, and declare you a traitor?

Or was it easier than that? Was he as exhausted as you must be of creating small compartments for people, naming these ones right and these ones wrong; these ones are for hell and these ones for heaven? I wonder that he might have been tired of keeping order in the junk drawer of Good vs Evil in his heart’s back closet, endlessly becoming disorganized when some unwanted feeling or memory or unexpected entry shakes the house.

However you convinced him, I’m glad. I’m glad to hear you are feeling better, no longer under the tyrannical force who isolates you from your friends and demands absolute allegiance. But the part that is most exhilarating– the part where you say, “I hold nothing against you. The record is cleared…” It is here that I know you are finally vanquishing this dictator. Because what I remember is that your God gives that authority to no one but himself. You have no agency under him. So it seems for you to locate the record that God created, and then to clear it, means that you have truly slain the monster who held you back. And for this, I am proud of you. Because this means that God is no longer the mask you wear, nor the excuse that you make for the decisions you have made.

But it’s shaky then, isn’t it? Because to override God means that there wasn’t a record to clear.

So the letter, it seems, really wasn’t for me. It was for you. Because a letter for me would say something like, “Hi, how are you?” and “It’s been a while” or even “I’m sorry.” To be clear, I don’t even really need you to say you’re sorry. I know you’ve been in captivity with a relentlessly trifling and small celestial who shrouds your responsibility to yourself and others in vagaries and complication. But the incredible thing about the phrase, “I’m sorry,” is that it is a bright light shown into a dark place. While “You are forgiven” might seem like the same thing, it’s really just another way of saying “I was right and you were wrong, but at least I’m the bigger person about it.” It’s in a kinder direction than “God said I can’t be with you anymore,” but it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

I can see why you didn’t use it, though, because it might not be what you mean. “I’m sorry” is gutting, not for the person it is directed toward, but for the person saying it. It doesn’t give the same soothing affirmation like “You’re forgiven” does. It completely demolishes all semblance of self righteousness. It’s awfully humbling, and can sometimes be held back with an inexplicable rock in the throat, strangling the words as they try to leave.

It leaves you with a few questions, too. Like the question of forgiving oneself.

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? It is. It’s the medicine you don’t want to take and the only cure. Because if you can eke it out over those chronic replays of the argument in your mind, over the visceral distrust of yourself and the person you are saying it to, over the hubris that is begging you to keep your grit, woman, a path has been cleared for a miracle. Bigger than water walking and better than raising from the dead. “I’m sorry” is a boomerang that flies through the rigid air and returns again. The stone rolls away, the loaves and fishes abound. There is room again to restore.

And here is where the forgiveness actually lives, thrives, and is forgotten.

At least that’s what I’ve heard back from god. Her aim is generally true.

And she told me to tell you, I’m sorry.

To Be Small and Alone and Alive

I have been lately in recovery. Or rather, I’ve been in attempt to recover my childhood. Not dredging up memories or sorting family history with the perspective of adulthood. But mining for the pockets of being a kid that made me feel alive. Some call this “childlike wonder.” But I’m not interested in being childlike. I don’t want to diminish the true and real magic of sinking into one’s own imagination in terms of likeness, or in terms of condescension. I am not trying to “act like a kid,” but to be myself. My whole self.

While my Someone was in California last month, I had the house alone for the first time in our three years living in New Hampshire. Our home is a cabin at the end of a dead end street with a thick edge of forest. In the spring, the birds are so loud it’s sometimes difficult to hear one another when we sit on the porch. As summer wrapped, under a moonless sky, I could hear everything. Every shift of leaves under the falling acorns. Every rustle in the woods– a bear? a skunk? a fox? a weasel? (we have them all)– that had me on edge as I tried to play it cool on my porch swing, sipping NA wine and reading a book. Something about the fear, the bumps in the night, took me somewhere else. I texted Annie– “I think something is in the woods?” Intuitively, she Facetimed me right away. We chatted for a good long while, until she said, “Well, do you feel better?” And I did. We hung up and I waited longer, letting the sound of crickets overtake the real-or-imagined bumps in the woods. We had only last week had a bear come and mangle our bird feeders and shepherd’s hooks. I double checked that I had brought the feeders in. I had. And then, I stood up, unplugged the lights, and walked to the front porch steps, and sat down. Above me, the stars were blazing. The dark wrapped me up like a blanket, and I watched as one, two– was that a third?– shooting star passed between the crowns of my trees. I was not afraid of the dark, it turns out. I was afraid to be standing only on the edge of the dark, to be separate, to only stand on the precipice of living rather than saturating myself in the deep of it all.

In Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water, she writes an entire chapter on the ages we hold within us. When we grow to be fifteen, we still carry our five-year-old self, our fourteen-year-old self, our just-born self. I reference this on occasion, but usually in terms of justifying my joy or explaining my little-“t” trauma. The real point, I think, is that we don’t lose anything by growing older. We don’t lose our ability to imagine, to create, to be fearless and uncritical just by gaining a year and perspective. We are not just allowed, but are necessarily required to call on these younger selves to navigate the world around us. To censor them is to lose ourselves. Which means that to try and recover my child-self– I am not finding something that is lost out in the world, left like a doll on a riverbank– I am simply resting my 39-year-old self and my 38-year-old self all the way back until my 6-year-old self can have the space to move without criticism or restriction. I am not becoming a kid again, I am a kid already. Everyone else can take a nap.

The thing is, when I was a kid, I didn’t think of myself as a kid. Don’t you remember how you bucked and brooded to be left out of adult conversations? To be told you weren’t old enough, that you were too young to understand? I knew in my mighty small heart that I could handle it, that I contained otherworldly knowledge that could not only be trusted, but could be the key to the lock of poor adult judgement. Of course I did– because didn’t I always have to explain to those stupid adults the picture I just drew? The intricacies of story, the Easter eggs planted throughout, the intention behind using yellow instead of red when it was all so obvious to look at? So to be a kid again is not to act with immaturity, but to set forth with utmost confidence, to believe the thing we are born with– that we belong, that we understand, and that we are important.

During my weekend alone, I spent each night on the porch reading. Then I would shut off the lights and look at the stars. I felt the habit growing in me– to look up. It felt like reconnecting. I continued to do so after my Someone returned home. Instead of working until 10, unwinding with a show and calling it a night, I stopped our work at 9:30. Whether he would stop working or not did not deter me. I would sit on the porch, I would be quiet, and I would look at the stars. I lulled my thirties to sleep this way. Then my twenties. And by the time Laurie asked me to come and teach a short bookbinding project for a couple days at the local elementary school, I’d finally found her– the Preteen that would stay up late writing poetry, drawing, and losing time to listening to the same record four times in a row.

The night before my first class, I went to my studio late. I would just put something quick together– a little book for the kids that they would get the point and I could move on and go to bed. But then I remembered what it was like to be a kid. How “kid things” were unappealing. And then I put aside my belief of myself as The Adult Teaching Kids and became a kid. I worked on my little book and 10pm became 11pm. I would miss the porch tonight, but I didn’t mind. There was no music on– just the sound of the crickets outside and of scissors cutting, and of a glue brush swiping across the paper. When it was finished, my Someone had given up and gone to the house, and it was 2AM when I followed.

I cannot remember the last time I fell into a creative portal til 2AM.

I had made a book. But more, I had found something of myself. The class went well the next day, I was still energized from the making. I hardly used the book in the teaching, but it didn’t matter. I am in recovery, and will always be. Because to let my younger selves take the reins is not just an act of discovery or healing, it’s prudent to preserve my well-being. And it’s the living.

This is my little book. It’s about how I felt as a kid to read. Luckily, I am still that kid, and it is also how I feel now.

Short Cuts & Snake Bites

Susan in Greeley, CO spent her career as a physical therapist. She told me most often, people are injured simply because they are not paying attention. They have decided to take a short cut, or feel hurried, or take their mind from the thing they are doing in order to save time or mental effort and– crack, bam or twist— that’s when it happens. It is in these moments that their mind goes one way and their body goes another.

The mindfulness movement isn’t new– it’s ancient. But it’s been in a Renaissance of sorts, with words like “intentional” and “being present” seeping into the vernacular. My Someone’s grandma, whose memorial my Someone is attending this weekend, called it “Keeping body and soul together.” She was a devout Nazarene, and would likely be horrified to hear that phrasing in reference to my yogic practice. So I kept my delight of our shared sacred belief to myself, feeling strangely connected when I’d hear her ask her grandson at the end of their phone calls, “Well, are you keeping body and soul together?” Like trying to keep the vinyl floor glued down, or Wendy stitching up Peter Pan’s Shadow to himself.

The irritation with paying attention is that it takes time. There isn’t a short cut to not taking short cuts. It is an agonizing, unrelenting process that quite literally comes one step at a time. And if you aren’t paying attention– well, then you’ve already lost it.

Photo by Scott Tyler

I was thinking of Susan when we walked the low sloping hills along our campsite in the Badlands last month. We were going to see these natural phenomena with our friends John & Becky, who’d flown all the way out from New Hampshire to spend a week with us on tour in South Dakota. While they’d stayed in a hotel, we’d slept in the park under a drape of stars the night before, listening to the coyotes yip close by. John & Becky would be meeting us in the morning for breakfast, before it got too hot to bear, and we hopped-to to get the dogs a walk before their arrival. We’d been walking for more than 20 minutes or so when it felt like time to turn back. I didn’t want to be late. My Someone and I looked back over the path along the ridgeline, realizing we’d gone further than we thought. Then we took a look down the slope of the hill, tall grasses and an occasional cactus that led down to a faster road back. Susan’s words began to press on me, but I pushed through them in favor of the press of time that is almost always pushing on my skull.

Then a new feeling passed over me– something was wrong.

“Snake awake!” I yelled, a mantra we’d been shouting since we saw a sign that read those words back in Colorado.

“Snake awake!” my Someone yelled back, laughing. But I wasn’t laughing– I knew.

At that moment, ten feet into the uncharted grass, my littlest dog stepped on a snake. I pulled her back, hard, and ran us back to the dirt path. I checked her over, frustrated. The press of time suddenly didn’t matter. I saw nothing– no mark, no reaction. We took the long way back. When we arrived at the bottom, our friends Michael & Erin were there waiting– we were in our last week of tour together. I recounted our walk, the snake, and just as I said “And I guess she didn’t get bit after all–” my Someone pointed to her foot.

There they were, two bright red dots on the foot she’d stepped with, perfectly sized to the small snake I’d seen. Now, I pushed the rush of my head down and began dialing John & Becky. My Someone packed the truck and called the local vet.

“Can you go with John & Becky to see the Bandlands today?” I asked Michael and Erin. Of course, of course. And we were on our way. When we finally got to better service, just a mile up, I got hold of the Visitor’s Center, then another vet. They both had me describe the situation, the size of the snake, the color, my dog’s reaction. And both assured me– no, everything will be all right. Keep an eye on her, but there is almost assuredly nothing wrong. The dog is big, the snake was small, and the likelihood of it being a rattler– even a small one– is low. I hesitated, then took a moment to put body and soul together. I listened. And then, yes. They were right.

We returned to the campsite where all of our friends were waiting. We ate heaping bowls of oatmeal and slurped our coffee and everyone doted on my littlest dog, telling her how brave she is, watching her for any indication of poisoning. I felt my heart rate decrease. And my littlest dog got a first class ride in Michael & Erin’s van for the day to monitor her as we all went to see the Badlands.

No more short cuts were taken. It was a really stunning visit.

Photo by John Foster

When we returned from tour, my mind was brambled from the trip. My Someone’s grandma had passed away. One of my best friends had lost his dad. And also, my mother was coming to visit. My mother, who has not in my adult life come to visit me– just me. My mother, who I have been estranged from for several years. This atop the stress of travel, of hundreds of people and personalities and no time to take it slow. So, just as with last August, Rowe & Laurie helped us secure a canoe and some gear, and we headed to the Green River Reservoir in Vermont to watch the beavers swim and the loons nest and the water change color with the sunlight.

On the first morning, they took an early paddle out while my Someone and I stayed back. I began painting a little book I’d brought along beside our morning fire and coffee. When they returned, I made motion to get up when Rowe said–

“No, no need to go yet. You’re doing it. You’re doing the thing we come here for.”

“You mean wasting time?” I said.

“You’re not wasting time,” he said quickly, “you’re embracing it.”

As it turns out, there are no shortcuts to embracing time. You simply have to spend it as it comes. I thought of this as we paddled in the morning, ate our lunch by the water, swam. I thought of this as I lazed about starting a new book and reading it for consecutive hours, breaking for a small nap in between. I thought of this the next morning, when I woke first a little before five, and felt called to embrace time by touching the water. When I dipped in from the rocks, the fog was still on the water and cast in a pink glow from the sunrise. I soundlessly submerged myself to my neck, and as I waited, patiently asking myself to embrace time, a little creature’s head began moving toward me. I gasped, but he was undeterred. The young beaver swam, turned, and swam again, making circles around the spot I was treading water. Finally, he swam off and didn’t return. I took it as my cue to finally swim forward, out to the little island in the middle of the reservoir. When I got there, I stood up on the rock, and my little friend caught sight of me in my full height from the shore. He slapped his tail in warning– I was not what he’d expected.

I waited a little longer, making sure I wouldn’t be interrupting his morning work, and when I didn’t see him, I tread back in to swim to shore. Within three strokes he appeared again, and swam alongside me, just a couple of feet away. We swam like this til we arrived back to shore. I stayed in the deep for a while, watching him chew industriously for several minutes until I was sure my presence would bother him. When I returned to the rock, he pushed from shore again and swam toward me. It was the closest we’d been in our time together. I saw his little eyes glistening and the texture of his fur, his nose moving with the intake of breath. And then, he was gone. When I left the water, I did not feel as though I had embraced time. I felt that time had embraced me. I swam with a beaver for 45 minutes. It was at least my best guess as I saw my friends emerge from their tents around 6.

I was grateful to see Laurie first. I couldn’t spend another minute keeping this little piece of magic to myself. Or rather, I could only spend another minute, the next minute, one at a time. I didn’t take any shortcuts. I told her every detail.

The visit with my mother went well. More than well. By the end of the weekend, it was as if we’d recovered something. In some way, we had. But it wasn’t time. I kept reminding myself after I dropped her off at the airport that the time spent apart wasn’t wasted. In order to keep body and soul together, we had to remain apart. Relationships are the body of two people. For these years, I became mindful of this body I share with my mother– how it works, how it doesn’t. And I remained mindful of it when we were physically together again. For the first time, I felt like myself around her. And I kept my mind on this shared body– I listened harder, I noticed more, I welcomed her like I’d learned to welcome myself in this time we spent apart.

There were no missteps– no emotional twisted ankles or metaphorical snake bites. Because we had not taken any short cuts to get here. We endured the painful, long road of healing. I could not have fast forward through the anger, the grief, the despair in the same way that she could not race through the regret, the ache, the distance. We took our agonizing time. And while we may not be running any races now, we are at least walking the same path again. Slowly. Keeping body and soul together.

What I Learned from Being Kissed by a Wolf

There is a wolf rescue in Westcliffe, Colorado– way back along several dirt roads and a few foothills. This rescue has one objective– if it’s good for the wolves, they do it. It’s been running since the year I was born, 1986, and the founders are calm, generous spirits who you can sense possess the half wild that humans dream of when they are kids– the in tune nature we possess before formal clothing and social expectations wield their way over the freedom of bare feet and sun on our skin.

We’d played a show for a group of 90 or so in town the night before, a favorite on the folk circuit. So much so, that our fellow folky friends reminded us over lunch on our way down– “Don’t forget to see the wolves.” This was our third time to Westcliffe, and both times before we’d forgotten to see the wolves. We are always in a hurry, and are working on that habitual flaw. So we called our host Bob as we drove down to the show, as a reminder to ourselves and a commitment to upkeep, and told him, “We have to see the wolves.” He obliged.

We took a quick morning run with our very tame dog, stopping at a local coffeeshop where the barista was chatty and asked us what our day would bring. “The wolves,” we said.

“Are you going to let them lick your teeth?” he asked.

Without hesitation, I said “Yes. It’s all I can hope for.”

And it was.

When You Go To Meet the Wolves, there is no guarantee they will greet you. They are wild, or at least half wild, and it is in fact very weird for them to want to approach. But if you are a very careful and a very lucky human, it can happen. And when it does, you must:

  1. Walk in with your shoulders back, looking around. Women are typically better at this, as they have been conditioned to be multi-taskers, watching cubs & prey & predators at once, chronically aware of danger and potential danger. Men, on the other hand, have a tendency to stay narrowly focused, hunched, and singularly minded. This inability to be open does not warrant the respect of a wolf, and just as the man ignores his wider surroundings, so he will be ignored by the wolf as neither threat nor peer.

    When I enter a room now, I will keep my shoulders back and my senses awake. My presence may feel threatening to some, but to those that matter, I will appear as an ally.
  2. After entering the den, look for your spot to sit, and sit down like a Queen to her Throne. Face up, shoulders back, alert.

    I would add to this, deep breaths. I am in more danger by believing I don’t belong somewhere than to believe that I do.
  3. When the wolf approaches and makes eye contact, look back. This is contrary to what we have been taught of wild animals, and contrary to what we have come to believe about people who are different than us. Anyone who cannot hold eye contact with a wolf is neither friendly to their approach, nor worthy of their time. For people, the same.
  4. Do not be on your technology. Hunching over and staring at a phone creates a hunched back, a downward gaze, and is not the behavior of a guest. It is the behavior of a mountain lion. It is the behavior of a predator.

    The wolves do not care that you have a social media post you have to check in on, or that flights to Edinburgh have just gone down $53, or even about your Merlin app that helps you connect with nature. They care that you are present, and not there to attack them. And even if they know that you are not a mountain lion, it has not yet been resolved as to whether or not the device in our hands isn’t the predator to us. When you are with the wolf, be with the wolf. Though this advice might be important in anyone’s home. What are you doing here if not to be here?

    5. Remain calm. The wolves can sense your fear. They can also sense if you are too eager. Neither is worth their welcome. Come back when you can be a guest that is respectful, and not radiating an energy that will disrupt their intentional ecosystem.

    You are a guest here in this den. You are a guest here in this country. You are a guest here on this earth. We are only caretakers, immigrants, passers through. And we are only given the time we are given. Don’t be afraid. Don’t rush out ahead of yourself. You’re here. Be here.

When Kissed by a Wolf:

  1. Do not draw back. Remain as steady as you can. She will come to you fast, and you have been taught to be afraid. But from the moment you walked into her den, you have been training to be open and ready for her approach. It only takes minutes to untrain a lifetime.
  2. Grab behind her head and pull her in. Do not push her away. You’ve been fooled your entire life to believe that you don’t deserve this gift, the gift of close contact, the gift of a wild face upon your own face. But to push her away now would be to do to her what you have always done with everyone else, and the result is the same– she will think she is not wanted. She will be rejected. She will go away. And for all of your life you have never been so lucky as you are right now, this glorious fur and direct eye contact in your tame-for-too-long face– so for the love of all things sky and moon above, grab behind her head and draw her in. Drink the connection of stone to grass to wolf to woman and let her know that you are not only here and in control, but she is in good hands. Hands firmly here.
  3. She will want to lick your teeth. You are welcome to keep your mouth closed, but you’ve come this far, and even as you purse your lips, she will fleabite your lips until they open and then she will lick your teeth anyway. So it is better to have it. Let it be the full dental exam you haven’t had yet this year as you worry about your healthcare getting taken away– but wait, don’t worry about that right now. Because you are being kissed by a wolf in her own home and you have nothing in your head but this strange tongue in your mouth and the joy of being chosen. From here, she may let you pet her. She may arch her back and let you pal around and play and scritch those hard to reach places and circle you again and you will allow it because for the first time in your life, you are ready and truly open.

But Remember This:

Once a wolf has greeted you in this way, it is the equivalent to shaking hands in someone’s home. If you try again, it will seem strange to her. If you try a third time, she may be put off. Ten times in a row and you are a crazy wolf who needs to leave the den. Do not keep trying to shake hands with your host.

You simply have to accept that you are now accepted. This is the hardest lesson we may have to learn as people.

But sometimes, if you’re really really lucky like me, she might come back again. And again. And again. And you might be greeted like a long lost friend who has been reunited after years of being apart and no matter how many times we have kissed, it seems too good to be true and you will be kissed again. And in the acceptance and repetitive welcome of a wolf named Eden in Westcliffe, Colorado, you will come to accept a part of yourself you couldn’t before.

It will be an almost full moon that night. You will feel compelled to step out and see it, even though you are bone tired and feel less like you belong in the outer world of tall buildings and highways. And you will put your shoulders back and your chin up. Although it is a farce that wolves howl only at full moons, the truth is much better. That wolves howl at half full moons and no moons at all, too. They howl after feeding day, and when a change in the wind comes. They howl and howl and howl to mark the changes in the world and the changes in their lives and the cacophony would be maddening… if you weren’t now part wolf, howling back– open, open, open.

Mission: Wolf is located outside of Westcliffe, CO and currently houses 15 wolf dogs. Their ethos is simple– if it’s good for the wolf, they do it. If it’s not, they don’t. We owe them a great debt for the visit we had there, and the experience they offer all visitors and community members to bridge the gap in our brains between humans and nature through education, interaction, volunteerism, and space. If you would like to donate, visit, or learn more please head to https://missionwolf.org/

All photos by the staff at Mission: Wolf

Taking the Sea Roads

My friend Kirsten quit her corporate job a couple months ago and started work on an organic farm. She loves it. She finds chicken eggs in the beet patch since they’re all free range, and the other day heard her coworker call out “It’s Easter every day on the farm!” On this side, it sounds like an absolute delight. A dream. A Hallmark movie. But when she told me, she qualified it by saying “This is my year of doing things that scare me.”

A quirky little organic farm sounded anything but scary to me. But I recognized this sentiment, because it is also my year of doing things that scare me. And I chose the not-so-terrifying land of Scotland.

In March, I packed myself two weeks early for the trip. The bookbinding teacher who got me addicted to the craft was holding one of her last retreats on the Isle of Iona in the Hebrides, and five years of dreaming about it finally came to a head when I saw the announcement back in November. It was as if I didn’t have a choice. I thought I would barf when I hit the payment button– not because of yet another credit card charge, but because I don’t do this kind of thing. My life is adventurous in a cyclical, tame sort of way. I travel with my family in a little camper from coast to coast. While I see new places every year, it’s rarely outside the country, and never by plane. And never alone. In the preceding months, I looked at maps, had nightmares of plane crashes, watched the news on actual increasing plane crashes, bought luggage, and generally kept the trip quiet. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it felt like something was finally mine. Maybe I didn’t want the obligation to post on social media. Maybe I don’t always need an explanation for everything. Or maybe I was heading right toward something I felt fearful of. Alone. If I failed– whatever that means– I didn’t want anyone to know.

The truth of it is this, that I am almost 40 years old, and I am feeling the stiffness of my joints to want to always take the same walk every day. I feel the craving on my tongue for the same favorite food. I feel myself losing my grip on the newness a day brings, and instead seek the most comfortable way through it. I have begun lumping people together, attaching their experiences and stories to a prototype I’ve met before. I am looking at the short line from 40 til death, and I am afraid that I will become increasingly afraid, of just not feeling like going out tonight for nights on end. Of needing an explanation for everything. Of letting the same neural pathways dictate my life’s path. So, goddammit, I went to Scotland.

On first foot down, I felt entirely at home there. Even as I clutched my meticulously written itinerary in my homemade journal, I was completely okay. From the moment I landed in Edinburgh to the welcoming hospitality of friend-of-friends Jan and her sister Morag, to the moment Jan put me back on the Tram nine days later, the fear I had been brewing for the previous months had alchemized into something else entirely. I was open, clear headed– alive. My trip had me starting in Edinburgh, a train to Oban, a ferry to Mull, a bus across Mull, another ferry to Iona and then four days of bookbinding and island views before I took the trip again in reverse. I woke every day at first light, before my alarm, and wandered to whatever landscape or seascape rested outside my bedroom walls. I ran through the Stockbridge neighborhood and laughed aloud at the swans on the pond with the sight of Edinburgh in the background. I jogged along the shores of the North Sea in Oban after a night of indulgent, rich seafood and a glass of whiskey from the oldest distillery in Scotland. I ran through the oldest preserved nunnery from the Middle Ages on Iona, its thick walls only partially standing as it faces the Isle of Mull across the short channel. I walked around Arthur’s Seat with two new friends and drank a pint that nearly knocked me on my ass afterward. I ate fare lovingly prepared in the homes of never-strangers-again and thick potatoes in the corner of a dark pub on St. Patrick’s Day.

I wrote down every oat cake I ate (my new favorite food), every Tram, ferry, train, plane or bus that I took. I unwrapped the homemade pesto and tomato sandwich with grapes that Jan had made me for the train previously, and reveled as I acted the part of brooding author and ate them one luxurious bite at a time, hovering over my journal for the three hour trek from Edinburgh to Glasgow to Oban. I have never known the feeling of care as I did to have a sandwich packed for me for the train. Or when Annette or Linda on the island brewed a cup of coffee for me. Or when I slipped into the fluffy, wearable towel lent to me by Rachel after taking a cold swim in the North Sea. I was alive, alive, alive alive and I could hardly stand to close my eyes at night for the wait it would take to open them to be alive again.

All this for walking toward what I was afraid of. It’s an uneven trade, in my favor.

I suspect that what we mean when we say we are going to do what makes us afraid is that we are actually afraid of staying where we are. That to stay still and to do only what we know will comfort us to death. We will smother on our own security blanket of income, of home, of people we know. To do what we are afraid of is to, in fact, do what we are made for– to explore more deeply, more sincerely the plentiful gift of time that we are allotted.

My first hour on Iona I was met by my teacher, Rachel, who I admired for five years, welcoming me to her and her husband John’s croft. After a brief lunch and introductions– by this point, the five of us attending the workshop were well acquainted from the ferry and the bus and were by all accounts a family– we were given our reign of time.

“Go below the sheep field and you’ll be on the beach. Go right and you’ll find the seaglass beach. Go left and it’ll take you to the Carraig an daimh where there’s a raised beach full of beautiful rocks where the sea level used to be.” I chose left. Rachel gave me further instruction– walk the sandy beach until you come to the rocks. Cross the rocks– wear suitable boots– and cross a second sandy stretch. This will take you to the part of Iona known as The Great Silence– where hermits and spiritualists retreat to know no sound and person. Then cross one bog, go through the mounds and take a right at the fence. A short ways down you’ll see a widening of the fence. Crawl up and over the barbed wire and you’re there.

Seemed simple enough.

I took off, hardly able to keep myself from running the first stretch of sand, letting the imprint of seaweed in the sand, bright ocher lichen, and thick watery inlets catch my attention. I hopped the rocks like a kid– invincible, incapable of tiring. I yelled to the ocean and it waved back. The bog caught me up past my boots and I pressed, finding sheep bones and bits of rope. Through the mounds and down to the split, I’d carefully crawled my way over the barbed wire by levying between the fence post and a boulder until the land opened again and I was on the long expanse of beautiful big stones, mostly Mull Granite, and hurried to the water.

I am here! I yelled, laughing and crying, I am here and I am HERE!

I touched the water and turned back to the cliffs, climbing each one til the rocks became too slippery or something told me to turn back. I was an explorer, alone, a child and an ancient spirit touching the everything at once, and I had never known fear. On my way back I met my teacher on the beach, fresh from a swim with her dog Snuffy, and told her about my small Christopher Robin sized adventure.

“I’m so overwhelmed and I want to save my crying or I won’t have any left,” I said. She made a comforting noise of agreement and then offered me a towel to take a swim in the freezing North Sea. I gladly accepted.

And it was in this way that I spent my days on the Isle of Iona. Magically and without stopping. Toward the end of my stay, Pauline– our talented cook who turned fennel and leeks and rhubarb into a sort of fairy tale version of food– said plainly, “I have never seen anyone take advantage of the island like you have.” Doing what I am afraid of was paying off.

The second to last night we had a special dinner in the barn, decorated with lights and with a wood stove burning, the sound of the wrens nesting down for the night. We exchanged stories and songs and poems, and John– Rachel’s husband and the caretaker of the croft we were staying– told us of Iona, its history and lore. He held up a map of the island and the surrounding Hebrides and pointed to the various channels.

When you look at a map now, he explained, you think of the land being the positive space and the ocean being the negative space. But when Iona was found, it was the opposite. The ocean was the positive space and the land was less traversed. People traveled by way of sea roads. Almost all of the population lived by the sea, traversing by boat and channel to get to other cities and trading posts. In fact, land was considered dangerous. The further inland you traveled, the closer you’d encounter the marauders, the thieves, the dangerous people who had little to no place in polite society. This wild, untamed, brooding water was the safest way out and home again.

I held this idea as I went for my last swim in the freezing sea on Monday morning. By this time, I’d worked up my stamina to 26 strokes out and 26 back again. This coming a long way from the quick dip and post maniacal laughter from the shock of the water on day one. I was full of awareness of the sea and its ability to take me– if not from cold, then by current– and disappear me to the bottom with no recourse. I’d adopted a mantra when my feet touched dry sand again– thank you for letting me in, thank you for letting me go. It was a prayer and a risk and a shudder of relief, and also a reward for walking toward what I was afraid of. The short ritual of it gave me wonder that I might be friends with the sea, now. In response, the last wave pushed me up to land and seemingly hugged my legs for longer than the duration of its laps. There where the water receded, a beautiful piece of Mull Granite rested. When I picked it up, it fit my hand perfectly, the pink speckles growing duller as it dried. Thank you I said, and began walking back to start my journey home. I was no longer afraid. I would be taking a plane, of course, but the thought of crashing into the sea, of my last breath being taken by this water was no longer a spine numbing fear, but a small comfort. So it would be if it would be. By land or sea, I’d be going home.

I have been landlocked for over a decade before this trip. While I pride myself on being an open minded liberal type, the truth is I’m human and therefore fearful of what I don’t know. I am less so, now.

Last Saturday night, my country bombed Iran in an act of control and unnecessary power. As I watch the screens, increasingly filled with white men explaining why this was important, why we should be afraid, how they have solved a non-existent problem, I am struck by the ways I fooled myself into believing they were the safer road. All my life I have been trained to believe that here in the middle of this land are the heroes, the allies, the fathers of protection. But as I look at the map, I am seeing the truth that the water brings. That the further inland, the further locked and narrowed we become inside this block of land, the more dangerous it is. I have to find a way out– of this physical land, of this way of thinking. Because for all that I was taught to be afraid of out there, the danger is still only in here.

Of course, I have been rejecting the patriarchy for years. But in light of the sea roads, of changing the perspective from negative to positive, I am seeing these men even more clearly for what they are. Humans who have never done what they are afraid of, but have rather worked to control their own comfort. And their comfort is quite literally killing us all.

Back here in the States I am trying to stay awake. I am considering horseback riding this summer, or maybe climbing Mt. Washington. The sound of Iona and the view of Edinburgh from Arthur’s Seat at sunset still roll into my heart’s memory like waves, and I am reminded to move toward my discomfort. Sometimes by ordering something new from the menu. Sometimes by speaking out against our increasingly authoritarian government. Sometimes by reminding myself that no matter how tired I am, this is only ever once, and my perceived safety of I-80 across the United States is someone else’s biggest fear. And back and forth I flip my brain this way– negative space to positive space and again and again– so that I can do more than just do what I am afraid of. I can be alive.

39.

It’s strange that this is how it is–

that we are born,

first torn from our mothers, then from our homes.

Then, we are floating the rest of our lives, belonging to nowhere & nothing;

propelled on a search

to pair again

with a place or person who will return us

to the same belonging as

the womb.

(Maybe, the grave.)

Today I am 39, and I am relishing the transition of a decade into the next. My father used to say he’d be dead by 40. Then 45. Then 50. At some point, he relinquished his dream of dying young. I’m not sure of the impetus for his proclamation, but that didn’t stop me from mimicking him– I’d be dead by 25, 27, 30. I also gave up on the notion of dying young for the sobering reality that it is for only the good, and I was not yet good, but willing to try by my mid-30s. I am still not there, and I suspect may not be until well into my 90s– at least that is what I keep hinting to the Universe.

I don’t resent the extra time like my dad did– and maybe does. He was wanting to get to the next part– the Heaven part, where everything is perfect and the annoyances of mosquitoes and people he doesn’t like are sequestered in a basement of hellfire while he enjoys an eternity of blissful nothing-on-his-mind. His version of heaven is my hell, aside from the agreement of mosquitoes. I like the mistakes made, and I’ve only had time to make 39 years worth of them. And I’m coming to like the people I don’t like as I kindly get out of my own way to realize that returning to the womb is not a matter of isolating myself in a serene Zen of ocean views on a yoga mat– though that is what I got this morning. It is also the interruption of that serenity with a phone call from my mother on her morning walk in the woods with her dogs, calling to make sure she is one of the first to wish me a happy birthday, even though we hardly talk otherwise. It is also the interruption of a dog with diarrhea from drinking too much sea water on our morning run. It is also not getting coffee til almost noon and feeling the headache creep in. It is also a surprise phone call from David & Tim who serenade in full piano and voice on the other side of the line. Of a voicemail from Ann singing Happy Birthday with the same joy that she and Tom used to, before he moved on to his final belonging. My search for belonging has brought me here, to the ping of my phone and the annoyance of a dog who shakes the camper at night from her running dreams, keeping me from a full night’s sleep for days. I have built a whole life out here by trying to find the comfort of returning to a place I can and will never go again. And I am trying to see the mix of it not as a transience from one place to the next, but as the point of it, really.

Maybe that’s the difference between my dad and me. That while he eagerly waits to return to a state of blameless bliss, I have accepted that I never will, and am taking my time in the transition between the womb and the grave. Between my 30s and my 40s. Between one sip of water to the next. Between this breath, and this one. And in the luxurious waiting, I have made a home here. It’s not the one I asked for, but one I dreamed of, way back, before my eyes saw first light.

This is how it is–

that we are born,

torn from our mothers, and then our homes,

and we are left floating until we find each other,

and build a womb again–

only to be propelled to the next place

and the next place,

floating and rebuilding until

we are not floating,

but belonging

again and again and again.

You Will Find Your People

This will come as a shock to a few people, but last December I willingly went to church. It’s because of David, mostly. I would do anything for David. Not because he is good at talking me into things, but because I know that he would never lead me somewhere that I wouldn’t want to go– that he would never take me somewhere unsafe. David is a Protector of Peace– of his own, of mine, of yours, even if he’s never met you. He is a royal guardian of the stillness that makes us whole, and I would follow him to hell and back or even to church if he asked. David also happens to be a (somewhat) retired Episcopalian priest. So, in fact, he did ask. And I went, because that morning David was filling in and was preaching about love, and he knew that the topic was my specialty in song because we are kindred in the fact of Love. The New England meeting house was covered in snow, and the snow slid off in giant sheets from the roof as we approached and ducked in the doors, and continued to fall throughout the service with deep crashes. My Someone and I were greeted with the sound of the choir practicing when we entered, and so we waited in the foyer before David popped his head out and greeted us. We were welcome there. Not with an ulterior motive or hope of conversion, but because we adhere to the same principles of loving our neighbor. We were welcome not only to attend, but to take part, and to lead a song. The friendly faces of our community trickled in, and still David stood by us as the Protector of my Peace in a sanctuary that has not always represented a sanctuary to me. When it was time for David to speak, I sat and watched the bright winter gleaming through the windows shrouded with dark green wreaths and holly berries and I was overcome with Joy. The Joy bubbled until it was time for the congregation to share their Joys & Concerns, and my joy seemed that it fit the bill, and so I raised my hand and David called on me and I said, “This is my first time being in a church in thirty years where I feel safe and welcome.” And I thought I heard Catherine gasp, and I thought I saw Laurie tear up in the choir loft, and I thought of my friends who also sing songs, about the line they sing that always gets stuck in my head–

“Joy has not forgotten me.”
— Ordinary Elephant

David talked about love, and about the way into heaven, and how Jesus wasn’t the only way in. When it was time, I sang a song with my Someone from my heart to a congregation who not only heard me, but saw me. For a moment when I was singing so loud to let my Joy and my Sorrow out at once, I thought I saw my own voice in the rafters, and I felt whole in a place that has never before made me feel whole.

David’s husband Tim played the organ beautifully, and the service was over. Then Tim popped over to greet us with equal measure, because as David is a Protector of Peace, so Tim is a Creator of Joy, and he is entirely himself when he is passing that Joy to the people around him.

Afterwards, I ate gluten-free brownies and gluten-free crackers and cheese because David and Tim thought to bring them so that my Someone and I could fit in with the congregation and partake of the monthly birthday celebration that the church holds that commemorates all of the birthdays that take place in that month. I talked to Rowe for a time, and he said he was sad but that he had come to see David speak, and that by seeing David speak he would feel a bit better. And he did. But I still worried about him, so we packed up our instruments and said goodbye and drove down the road to Rowe & Laurie’s house.

At Rowe & Laurie’s house we talked about the morning, and about the things that were hurting our hearts, and Laurie listened intently because Laurie is a Practitioner of Patience. She can and will endure the drudgeries of our deepest, most selfish concerns and meet them with an open ear and heart and give no indication that she has heard it before, or that she has anywhere else to be. She will hurt anew alongside as you reopen an old wound just to peer inside of it and wonder at its bleeding. She pairs well with Rowe, as he is a Keeper of Kindness– that even if his darkness is getting the better of him, like all of our darknesses sometimes do, he will look up from it and thank you and ask if you are okay. He will smile gently and tell you that you are doing good work in the world, even if you have done nothing at all. He will say something unexpectedly generous into the space that needed extra lifting, even as he is as inconsolable as a kid who has just lost his baseball game.

I have learned a lot from these beating hearts.

David likes to say that we live in a little Haverhill Bubble up here– that somehow, some way we’ve all found ourselves together in the midst of the absolute tumult that is corroding our society, our government, our country out there. He says that it is no accident that we’ve found each other. I accepted this without considering it much, until we left Rowe & Laurie’s house that day. Because as we drove away, honking our horn and waving and feeling lighter, we looked to the top of the driveway and Rowe & Laurie linked arms and began swinging their legs in unison– right kick, left kick, right kick– like in a dance line. I have never seen them do that before. And I have never seen anyone else do that as a farewell before– except for two other very important people.

I was in my second December of grief without Tom. Ann, Tom’s widow and my friend, told me that it is not the first year that is hardest, but the second. In the first year, it’s all new– the first Christmas without him, the first birthday, anniversary, on and on and on. But the second year, that is when it is no longer a new unpleasant sensation. That is when it is simply the way things are. That the person you love is no longer just gone, but forever gone. I was feeling the weight of the goneness, of the emptiness Tom left behind when we drove away from Rowe & Laurie’s house. When I used to drive away from Ann & Tom’s house after my frequent visits, the two of them would link arms and kick their legs back and forth like in a dance line. It was a silly, adorable tradition I watched for two decades. I didn’t understand the starkness of the emptiness until our recent trip to see Ann, when she stood alone to continue the tradition. She smiled, but it hurt a bit to see only one half of what I was used to seeing.

Now, to see Rowe & Laurie continue a tradition they didn’t know in the bleak mid-Winter, where I felt my deepest sorrow, something became clear about David’s observation. That, in fact, it is no accident to be found together in this place. And it is not a stroke of luck, either. A thought emerged, like an indentation pressed into my skin–

You will find your people, and you will never lose them.

They may die, shift, move, transform, but they will never leave you. It is not a matter of one replacing another– that would be impossible. It’s more like this– that when you come to know your own heart, your heart opens. And in that openness, a signal is sent out, a magnetic force, that searches and finds the openness of others and draws them together in a series of seemingly unrelated events.

The heart thinks itself clever and mysterious, but in the fullness of itself, it slips up occasionally and bubbles over with the Joy of its own connections, and we see it working. Like in a silly goodbye dance routine at the top of a driveway. Those are the glimpses we catch of seeing our heartstrings vividly, tied to another’s.

So while people are never replaced, they are replenished. And it is in this way that once you find your people, you will never lose them.

I have always liked the Fruits of the Spirit from the Bible, because I like food metaphors, and also because I liked to figure out which one is the banana. Likely Joy. Even though the Bible is not a text I subscribe to, anymore, it does continue to pop up alongside other texts that can be categorized as helpful in processing the world around me. The way I have understood the Fruits of the Spirit before– love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control– were that they are something to aspire to, something to work on. If you aren’t being kind, you are not properly channeling the Holy Spirit, and should find what is blocking you from producing this tasty delicious fruit everyone likes so much. I know now that this is in fact the opposite of how they work. The fruit is not the goal, the fruit is the symptom. And these are not fruits in a fruit bowl plucked from different hemispheres and delivered in a refrigerated truck. They are, instead, fruit of the same tree. They’re all apples. Or bananas, if you’re feeling silly. And if one of your apples is sick, it is likely that all of your apples will soon be sick, as they are connected together and so collapse together. When someone steals your joy, you lose your patience, then your ability to be kind, you start to feel like a bad person, you lose your allegiances, you become hardened, and you lose your ever-loving mind at the first person who says something to you with “that tone.”

And so it is with my community. While they all contain these fruits, they also specialize each in one or another at different times. And when it is becoming apparent that even John is angry, or Laurie is impatient, or Tim is downtrodden, then our tree– even here in our Haverhill Bubble– is becoming sick. We must tend to it, or we will all become sick. And when we all become sick, we stop opening ourselves up. And when we stop opening ourselves up, we lose our people, and then ourselves.

Love is obviously the root, but I am increasingly convinced that second in line is Joy. Once Joy is stolen, the tree is done for. And these days, as the rights and jobs of our neighbors and our families and our fellow Americans are being needlessly and with gusto stripped away; as the sanctuaries of our National Parks and our literal sanctuaries are being denigrated with fear mongering and trash; as we watch a dangerous unfolding of how quickly dehumanization becomes contagious and gives license to the power hungry, it is rather difficult to rally the sounding bell for something as pitiful as Joy.

And still, we try.

Last Wednesday, Laurie marched us forward with aplomb to Trivia Night at the only open restaurant in town across the river to fortify our little tree, to save our fruit. There, we bought overpriced food and answered meaningless questions and got nervous for no reason other than the arbitrary rules we’d agreed to upon participation. I watched the mishmash of people who knew each other to varying degrees open, then open some more. We were on a winning streak. We began a signature clap each time our team got a right answer. David became a white noise machine to cover our discussion of answers. We frequently yelled wrong answers rooted in inside jokes as a cover. Joy had not forgotten me. The final question, and by golly it was a home run. Not a literal home run, as no one at our table knew anything about baseball. But we did know a lot about Harry Potter, and that was fortunately the final question. We were riding high on our win when a rumble broke out from another table. There was a technicality. There was pushback. There were a lot of very angry straight white dudes getting rowdy with drink and anger. Our table said nothing, but we did get quieter.

In that moment, the Bubble felt a bit broken. It was not lost on anyone the demographic who was angry, who was getting loud when they didn’t get what they wanted. The rules bent. An additional round would break a tie that wasn’t a tie. The last question was actually about baseball. Our team gave it a go, but we lost. The host was generous and dropped the prize bag at our table, anyway. Conversation picked back up, and we shook it off and paid our bills. On my way to use the restroom, I heard the dissenting table loudly call themselves the real winners. I heard them talk about how the system was against them. When I got back, our table had already moved on to talking about their plans for the weekend. As we bundled up and headed back to the car, we kicked around the uproar a bit. But then Tim turned up the music and David and Laurie taught my Someone how to vogue to Madonna and I found myself needing to forgive the other table back at the restaurant because my friends had long let it go, and I was still trying to bring them with me. And I was missing the Joy in the backseat by dragging a table full of disgruntled patrons whose names I don’t even know into the car with us.

I would lose my people right here with me if I let my Joy be stolen. No, not even stolen. Stolen implies intent, and I was freely giving it away in exchange for a rotten piece of fruit, bitter at its core. I gave away my Joy and I lost my patience, my gentleness, my belief in the goodness of myself and others.

The point, again, is not to attain the fruit. If my purpose was to attain Joy without tending to the tree, I’d find a fake– toxic positivity at best, an artificial poinsettia with that weird bad texture on the petals that’s both scratchy and flammable. Contrived Self-Control has a fast expiration date. Peace has never been successfully replicated. The purpose of the fruit is to know how to care for the tree.

I am going away soon. I am hopping on a plane, alone, and going across an ocean and taking a class on an isle in the UK wherein I gather driftwood from the beach and learn how to bind it into a book. It’s been on my list for a very long time, but fear and timing and finances have made it impossible. But the greatest of these was fear. After years of putting it off, I finally became sick with my own fear and bought the plane ticket and the room. I am determined not to become someone who is afraid of a people or land on the mere fact of having never been there or met them. I feel myself in my youthful aging already becoming set in my spine of the way I do things. I have not navigated the world on my own in over a decade, let alone travel across an ocean to do so, and I am becoming decrepit in my adventure skills, and judgmental in my initial approach to other lands. I am determined to break the growing and binding fascia that is building around the way that I understand the world so that I do not succumb to those muscles only working one way and becoming inflexible. That is to say, I am trying to be open.

I have been packed for a week, and still have two weeks before I leave. I am happy to be nervous to try something new, but I also acknowledge that my bedroom has been overtaken with packing and has evicted my Someone and I to the guest room for the last two weeks. He is ever patient, a growing apple on his tree, and says he likes it better this way.

I wrote to my bookbinding teacher at the end of last week to ask questions about the minutia of what to bring, and evidently after a week submerged in the news was feeling particularly vulnerable and included the phrase, It’s been a bit bleak around here. I may never come home.

The response came after the time change allowed, forthright and calm– Dear Mallory, You have much empathy and support here! Very looking forward to giving you some respite.

The recurring chorus began again– You will find your people, and you will never lose them.

Calling across the ocean, I opened myself up, and back came the fruit of my teacher– a Guidance of Gentleness to bring me back to myself. My people are everywhere. Perhaps even in a rowdy, drunk table of Trivia attendees if I am patient enough.

My teacher’s response gave me heart, yes, but she also gave me a desire to share. This is the obvious part of the fruit metaphor that I have overlooked. Fruit isn’t simply consumed at the end of the line. It contains seeds– it regenerates. It is not replaced, it is replenished.

After I reread her words a few more times, consuming all of the Gentleness I could take, I was compelled to share, to somehow package up this hope for my little tree, for the tree of my Bubble, and also somehow send the nutrients through the root system to everyone else’s tree, too. Love begets Love. Kindness begets Kindness. Joy begets Joy. On and on and on and on.

I am still fighting feelings of helplessness as the headlines roll in. The answer is still what it always is– small steps. I will water my tree. Sometimes that means, as is the recurring advice of Anne Lamott, to take a beat by sitting down and drinking a glass of water. I will also water the trees of my friends and my strangers in hopes that they all become my people. I will stay open.

“In All-Under-Heaven
Nothing is
Softer & Gentler
Than Water.
And yet it Prevails over
The Hard and Strong,
It is invincible.
Nothing Prevails
With such Ease,
Gentle over Strong,
Soft over Hard.”
–Lao-Tzu

And if that fails, I can always chuck some rotten fruit at the bastards.

Say Yes

The music was culminating to its purpose, to the moment of decision, to a crossroads. I sat in the local theater with friends on either side of me, popcorn long cast aside, tears welling as we watched the two witches from Wicked on the screen make their lifelong decision. If you are aware of the Wizard of Oz, you are well aware that these two witches do not team up– that their fate is to be apart, and tragically opposed. But in that moment of the movie as I leaned forward in my seat and the future Wicked Witch of the West extended an invitation to Glinda the Good to join her in her fight against injustice– though I had seen the show on stage four times and know what happens even if I hadn’t seen Wizard of Oz a thousand times as a kid– I held my breath.

“Come with me,” she says.

And in the pause, I heard it. In the back of the theater, a small fervent voice called out to the screen–

“Say YES!”

It rattled the lump in my throat and I cried then. Because I know the story. Because seconds later, Glinda says “no.”

But mostly because for a split second, there was the commandment of a small person calling into the same old story that there could be another ending.

Say YES!

This is the voice of hope that haunts me now.

The temperature in New Hampshire this week has not exceeded 30 degrees. We managed a white Christmas and a wintry dreamscape worthy of the December picture on a wall calendar. Last Saturday, we gathered with our community across the river in Vermont on Solstice Day before dark, and caroled around the neighborhood to nursing home facilities and to the homes of people shut-in due to illness, age, or heartache.

We finished the trail at Rowe & Laurie’s home, where they had prepared three kinds of soup and a spread of snacks that were quickly raised to higher tables when Poppy the golden lab arrived with John & Carolyn. The temperature was 8 degrees, but the home was warm with a wood stove, and soon everyone removed their layers and boots and still had rosy cheeks from the heat. Emmy & Rick read a solstice poem after the last guest arrived, and together we sang a rewrite of O Holy Night that I’d penned to be Solstice themed. We talked of the significance of the darkest day, of remembering that it only gets lighter from here– and that while the light in itself is hopeful, the greater hope is that on the longest night of the year, we have gathered with others to make sure we are all okay.

And we were all okay.

When it was time to go, I began bracing myself for the outdoors, calculating what drop in temperature may have already taken place in the couple of hours we’d spent here. I shivered a bit as I put on my boots and said offhandedly to Catherine, “Oh, it’s cold out there.”

And Catherine smiled and said, “Yes, it’s wonderful. With the way the world is heating up, I am always so grateful for a good, cold day. I just welcome it.”

Say yes, I thought.

We know how the story is going. We know that the polar bears are dying and the people of Greenland are worried that the ice will soon be so far melted that they can no longer live there and survive as they have for centuries. We know we are well past the point of reversal, that the wildfire smoke is a new season as winter used to be. But on these freezing nights, Catherine is not thinking of her inconvenience of heavy coats and layers and boots, she is calling into the story with glasses fogging from her breath–

Say YES.

I entered the night with a deep breath. The iciness hit my lungs, and I pulled the air in deeper. Then I calculated the ways in which I have done a poor job recycling this year. I could do better. I will. It would not reverse the story of our climate any more than gathering with loved ones on the 21st of December will bring the light any sooner. But if I say yes, I could at least find a little good, and a little more comfort for the people around me. It could lead to hope.

What I learned this season is that while Solstice celebrators seemed to bring joy to the world, Christmas only brings the cranks. The Solstice rewrite of O Holy Night went up on to the internet as a small welcome to the season, and was primarily met with tidings of comfort and joy.

And then, as the internet is Pandora’s Box, in came an onslaught of frightened people who called my Someone and I blasphemers, new age garbage, and “woke at its worst.” We closed our eyes and imagined our younger selves, who may have also sided with this perspective. We attempted to rationalize, encouraging them to be kind, take a breath, and perhaps remember that this is more about them than it is about us. I minded my tone, and recognized that theological and ideological debates feed the ego, but rarely feed the hungry. And that’s when I realized– Christmas is not at war with Solstice. People are at war with themselves.

Because Christmas at its Christian formation was a holiday about Saying Yes. It is about making room for the unexpected, making space for the stranger, making a literal room at the inn for people who are showing up at your door unannounced. It is about Saying “Yes, please take what is mine and make it yours.”

It is about Saying, “Yes, there is no mine and yours.”

And for this reason, people will find a way to feed their ideas of scarcity– pouncing on folk singers for taking “their” songs instead of taking that bundle of Christmas gift money and donating it a local shelter. Defending their nostalgia for a song in the name of God gives an untouchable righteousness unmatched by holiday cheer– and certainly avoids the risk of Saying Yes to what their chosen holiday actually means.

Welcome the stranger.

Say Yes.

And in this way, I found more empathy– mildly tempered with my own self-righteousness, certainly. But I’m working on Saying, “Yes, I hear that this song is important to you. Yes, you are welcome here anyway. Yes, you are loved when you are unable to love. Yes, come with me, come along, we could change this together.”

I know how the story goes. But I can still hope.

After the movie, Annie and I headed to the bathrooms and waited in line. I told her about the small voice I heard in the theater at the crucial moment. She took a deep breath and teared up.

“That’s just amazing,” she said, “because we all know how the story goes.”

I did know, especially for Annie. She and her spouse have been hurt in immeasurable ways by their former church communities in the last couple of years. Some of their closest friends have abandoned them for safer ideas about who is “in” and who is not.

“For me,” Annie continued, “it makes me hopeful, because I would just assume that your friends are going to tell you ‘no,’ that they aren’t going to come with you.”

I was struck at this moment, toilets flushing in the background, the smell of stale popcorn in the air, that Annie was more hopeful than she realized. For the week, she and her spouse spent the night in our home. While we were friends who met once a year for work, we weren’t close friends. And in the midst of complete relational desolation, she had taken my invitation to come. The week had been in every way perfect– the conversation, the shared food, the unfettering of our hearts. She had no reason to trust me when I said, “Come with me.” But she said yes. And it had been worth it. I didn’t know how to explain this to her– that her unbeknownst healing had also healed me.

So instead, I just repeated, “Say yes.”

“Say yes,” she said back to me.

And in this case, the story changed.