Listening

This morning, I sat alone on the backyard swing that I love but never use enough. I wandered back there with my morning coffee, still in my pajamas and fully relaxed for a change, but with a purpose. I needed a moment of hard-to-find-privacy. So phone in hand, juggling the coffee and stepping gingerly across the dew-covered lawn, I used the space and the swing to make a phone call out of the kids’ earshot. Blah, blah, blah, talked about nothing and everything, hung up the phone, and started to head right back into the house to find an overdue chore.

Something made me stop, though, and I sat a moment longer, trying to calm my exhausted mind from racing right on to the next task. And as the moment stretched into another and another, I realized I could actually feel the frantic pace of my life inside my body. It felt something like a small tornado, and my thoughts went from one thing to the next, fighting my decision to just sit calmly for a few moments and try to stop the craziness.

Trying to push away all possible stimuli, I closed my eyes and sat back, swaying gently and willing myself to just let go, even for a brief time, a few minutes, just to stop thinking and feeling and to focus only on being. What an amazing experience it was to filter out the visual, the tactile, the emotional … and to just listen.

What I heard was the world.

I heard birds. Pouring in and filling me up were their sweet sounds, chirping and trilling joyfully on this beautiful, early summer morning. I imagined them conversing with one another, shouting back and forth over the treetops, admiring the blooms and comparing notes on who had the best material for nest-building, chattering amiably about the little bird babies that would soon be hatching as summer begins to ripen. I’m sure I heard at least ten different bird sounds, all distinct and unique and lovely.

I heard the sound of children, shouting playfully across backyards, crying pitifully, perhaps over a skinned knee or enforced boundary, laughing with silly abandon in the glory of a lazy Sunday morning with nothing planned but a day of fun. Listening to them, I remembered when my own little ones were this way, when everything important was happening right then and there and nothing mattered but mom and dad and trying to make as much out of each minute as they possibly could.

I heard the dog next door. Good old Riley, such a gentleman of a pup with sweet brown eyes and just the right amount of affection for everyone. He barked happily, a greeting to my neighbor, who spoke to him lovingly in reply. I’m sure she reached down to caress his head and scratch his chin.

I heard the popping of a motorbike passing in front of my house, probably going too fast for a street where many children live and play. It faded quickly, reminding me that life is all around me and everyone is weaving their own patterns, choosing from a million possibilities for how to spend the day, the morning, the hour, the minute. The motorbike rider could be rushing off to see his girlfriend … to make up after last night’s disagreement, to propose marriage, to just be near her and say good morning. Or perhaps he is late … for breakfast, for his part-time job, for soccer practice. Or maybe just out for a joy ride, enjoying the beauty of the morning’s slow stretch before fully waking.

I sat there for a long while, just listening to the whispers of the world happening around me. How fast my life is spinning around me and within me, and how lovely it was this morning to just simply stop and get off the carousel for a few minutes, remembering all there really is out there, outside of myself. I only have to choose to notice it.

Pop Wisdom

I like pop music. I like show tunes from musicals, especially ones that I used to perform in. I like techno dance music. I like reggae. I like music from the 1980’s. I really like patriotic music. I like classic rock that has been bastardized to make it more peppy so I can run on the treadmill with it. I like ballads, but not Joan Baez, and I like songs with lots of harmony, which I love to try to sing. I like bluegrass and traditional Irish music and Neil Diamond. I like girl bands and boy bands. I like some punk rock, such as the Ramones, and I like lots and lots of alternative music.

I do not like blues, metal or hard rock, screaming guitars, opera, or classical music except for a few select pieces that are especially well-known and enjoyed by pretty much everybody. I only like jazz a little bit.

T has always loudly expressed his disdain for much of the music I listed above as those that I like. Except for reggae, which he also likes. Ever the peacemaker, and ever slightly lacking in acceptance of what I viewed as the more nerdy aspects of my personality, I turned my back on many of those likes. I focused on the stuff in the categories that we both like, like REM and a few others, and I pretended to like as much as he did some music that I really only liked somewhat or else was ambivalent. Like the Eagles. I like them, but they don’t make me feel happy inside.

I am embracing my nerdiness, as one tiny step in a long journey of getting back to the core of who I am, and I am uploading songs like crazy from iTunes that would make T’s hair curl. Mostly pop because my 10-year old daughter keeps suggesting songs that I can’t get enough of. I love the beat, the music, the straight simplicity of the music, and the pure enjoyment of listening to music that I can later sing along with when it inevitably comes on the radio.

No matter what the critics say, I’m finding, pop is not all fluff. It may not be poetry and it may not be a higher form of art, but there is a certain amount of wisdom found in lyrics that sprang from someone’s inspiration to make sense of an event, an emotion, a relationship, or anything else encountered in the world. And even without the shot of wisdom … it really is okay to listen just because it’s fun.

Writing on Pain

“'In an essay, the track of a person’s thoughts struggling to achieve some understanding of a problem is the plot, is the adventure.’” Rather than simply telling a story from her life, the memoirist both tells the story and muses upon it, trying to unravel what it means in the light of her current knowledge.”

My very good friend, who has been instrumental in my efforts to reconnect with the dream of writing, of looking for and listening to the muse within, was speaking of his own writing style and said that he thinks many people write, particularly on blogs, as a form of therapy. It was a comment casually made without judgment, a conversation not deeply explored at first, although we did speak of it again later. My insecurities about this very tendency are what have held me back from writing more often. I start a journal, or a snippet of a story, and I stop before I really get going because I can’t lose sight of the potential audience and the worry of what they will think; I begin to hear the whine and self-pity in my words as I write of recent sorrows in my life; I fear the reaction of those who see themselves reflected on the page and who may not appreciate the observations I record; I shy away from the criticisms I am certain will come, either directly to me, or worse, behind my back. Even while banging out professions of love or anger, protestations in defense of myself or my loved ones, or preoccupations with things that may only matter to me, I am certain that no one on the other end of the message really cares about anything I have to say. I see little in my writing that reflects originality of experience.

So I don’t write. I only think about writing. I see a story in nearly everything around me, and I push the images and the textures of my days into the back portions of my brain to mull like cider, waiting for the right moment to draw them out and onto a page where I might try to make some sense of them. I’m only waiting … for something, ... maybe maturity or insight or wisdom or less pain, so that I can process the mish-mash of impressions and sculpt them into something real.

And my friend says, after we had later brought this back to the table of our conversation, that perhaps it would be better to get the words onto the page while the pain, worry, fear, and confusion are still driving them. That perhaps the power of the emotion lies within the desperation and the dismay of not fully understanding them. That perhaps the writer releases them and then goes back to craft them into the message that is ready for delivery, and until that delivery, the words are only mine and only a reflection of what is real to me at the moment they are produced.

God, I loved that conversation. It has brought an old dream back to life and lit a fire under the dormant writer in me. I think the “art” of writing is still a long way out of my reach since I have not only been a long time out of touch with myself and my emotions, but also have not used words as a tool of exploration. Certainly, I have done a lot of writing for work, to communicate news to family, to argue various points on behalf of my children on occasion. But actually putting my hands on the English language in a way that transforms it into something fluid beneath my fingertips and allows me to create an image from my heart or mind … this is something I have lost, or given up voluntarily, and I would like to have it back.

For the first time, I think I can do that; I think I can reach into that back section of my mind and begin to make sense of what’s lurking around in there. Also for the first time, I think it is okay to let the words pour out of me, however they wish to be, and to accept them and love them just as they are. I will let them be, let them stare back at me from the page for a while before taking them in hand and massaging them so that in the end, they are who they are … "truth" in a shape and form that helps me makes sense of them and shows the world nothing more than a vision of who I am, have been, and wish to be.

Thyme Alone

More than three years ago, I sat on a shady outdoor patio on a quaint, historical side street of downtown Montevideo , Uruguay , enjoying a rare afternoon alone with my husband. My busy job at the U.S. Embassy kept us from having much time to relax together and just enjoy each other’s company. Our three children were in school and feeling annoyed to be there knowing that we had a day of freedom.

It was a peaceful blip in time, as I look back on it now, sitting there with my favorite companion, in a place where everything was stimulating and satisfying simply by virtue of it not being the United States, by its difference, its foreign-ness. I never feel more alive than I do when I am experiencing something new and different, unseen and undone before. Even in its simplicity, the day’s tenor filled me with happiness, and the man across the table from me, whose life I had been sharing for more than 15 years, filled me with contentment.

The silence was comfortable that day as we drank in the serenity of simply being together with no distractions and waited for our carafe of medio-y-medio, a Uruguayan staple made of half wine and half champagne and the perfect refreshment for a warm and lazy afternoon. Filling our glasses with a slight clink of glass on glass, the waitress smiled and breezed off to a distant table, leaving us again to each other.

I touched the stem of my glass and paused, searching for just the right sentiment to honor the mood, and then offered a toast to the day, …

“Here’s to time alone.”

T’s glass, halfway raised and tilted towards mine, stopped in mid-air for a moment before he snatched it back with a perplexed frown. “What did you say?”

Hovering between bemusement and astonishment, I hesitated, then repeated,…

“Here’s to time alone.”

Yet, his expression only became more confused, and then I became perplexed, worried that he wasn’t sharing my joy in the day. A beat passed, then a few more as we looked at each other for a long, drawn out moment of complete misunderstanding. Finally, he plunked his glass down on the table, and leaning slightly forward, asked in dismay,…

“Who the hell is Ty Malone?”

I roared, throwing my head back in full-bodied laughter before I could catch my breath enough to articulate more clearly my attempt to honor Time Alone and the satisfaction I felt in sharing it with him. We both laughed over that linguistic snag not only for a good ten minutes that afternoon, but also on into the future, time and time again as we remembered the simple pleasure of that day and the leisure we had enjoyed long enough to revel in a glass of wine and the birth of a private joke.

That day stands in sharp contrast to where we are now, a few years and many painful steps down the road. It wasn’t long after that sunny day on the patio that we left Uruguay in a panic as our oldest child’s health declined and the medical care in Montevideo proved to be insufficient. For nearly three long years hence, we have thrown all of our collective and individual energies into our son, fighting back fear as he struggled and we watched helplessly, trying everything and failing over and over to shift the direction of the wind.

My son’s journey is a conversation for another day, as it would take pages and pages to adequately tell his story and portray the multiple perspectives on how it unfolded. Suffice it to say, for now, that we are through the gauntlet, and while we recognize that in the end, we fared pretty well, we are not unscathed. Emotional trauma of the sort we experienced during those dark and stormy days leaves a trail of discarded dreams and bitter memories behind it. And like Hansel and Gretel trying to follow the breadcrumbs back home, I am finding that the path out of the woods to safer ground is no longer clear. I wish we’d thought to leave a few stones along the way as well.

Time Alone has become something I pursue for myself, in the purest essence of the word “alone,” which implies that it is not to be shared with another person. As I poured my heart and soul into saving my child, giving the dregs of what was left of me to my other two children who needed so much more than I had to give during those days, there was nothing left for me and nothing left for my husband. We walked parallel paths, occasionally overlapping as one failed philosophy on how best to handle things necessitated a shift, occasionally touching lightly during the darkest moments when fear of losing him took over and rendered all else insignificant. Our coping skills and strategies, after a time, stopped looking similar, and as the stakes grew higher for our son, we each dug deeper into ourselves and our own views, determined to manage things in the "best way," which meant implicitly that we pursued progress separately by following our own logic, discarding what we did not respect of each other’s. Some days, our respective “ways” were simply incompatible; other days, they were actually unproductive and generated more damage, the exact opposite of what we were aiming for.

Yet, here we are in the spring of 2009, and he approaches his 17th birthday with a level of health and confidence that I had feared he would never know. To see how far he has come is to witness a miracle, and I know that I would have paid any price requested of me, short of sacrificing my other children, to achieve this outcome. Indeed, the universe did not offer me a deal, did not indicate the cost in advance of the journey, did not make it clear to me that survival was something I could count on. So I signed on the dotted line, prayed I wasn’t selling my soul to the devil, and realized only after coming up for air that the price I paid was me.

I paid it, and I did so gladly. I gave up a connection with my own spirit, my own needs, and my own desires until I no longer understood what they were or what I had lost. To save him, I would pay it again, as many times as it might be required, but I am sorry for the loss of myself. The long sequence of sacrificing, compromising, negotiating, suppressing fear and anger, holding up other people, defending my child, and fighting with T about what was right, best, fair, and important has caused a lot of damage that will take much time and patience to heal. The damage has been done to me, to T, and to us. Because I lost myself and he lost himself, we lost each other.

Time for another journey. Time to set off for a destination unknown, through another wood with trees so dense that I cannot see too far ahead of each step, and so dark that I have to strain to see the tiniest sliver of light shining through. Time to see if I can even hope to find myself, to put the pieces of my spirit back together, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reach the edge of the forest and step into the meadow that must be on the other side.

I don’t honestly know what will be in that meadow, although I carry with me the seeds of myself and my three beautiful children, and I will plant them like wildflowers wherever I end up. I know that T, as the father of my children and the witness of half my life, will be there in some capacity. How could he not be? But will he be a wildflower, too, blowing in the breeze of a warm afternoon in the same meadow where I find myself? Or does he also carry seeds, on a separate journey, to plant wherever he finds himself? I don’t know if he’s searching for a meadow, a mountain, a stretch of white sand, or something else altogether. I do know that we have to travel on our own for a while, and the unknown cost of this journey may well be our relationship.

Time Alone has since become an ironic metaphor for my life. From a misunderstanding that left us in peals of laughter to a level of disconnect that has left us isolated, broken-hearted, and alone, …

Time Alone, Ty Malone, Thyme Alone …

a linguistic jumble that represents the ease with which we cross from one plane to another in this universe, often without meaning to, wanting to, or understanding what it is we are choosing. As we did that afternoon, so long ago, in a beautiful place, in a far away land, we will have to patiently ride out the confusion until we emerge with clarity, and certainly, with both laughter and pain as well as yet another journey lying ahead.