Love & Sorrow

It's in a mutual look
Arms around me
A brush of a kiss on my cheek
On my lips.
It's when
I'd rather eat in my car
With him
Than be comfy at home
On the couch.
It's when.
I am content
To be together.
After a whole weekend
Of togetherness.
Sometimes I wonder.
If I'm still actually really in love.
Or not.
But then there are moments
When without a doubt
I am in love.
And I wouldn't trade the world.
We're in this together.
I hope we change some corner of the world
Together.

In other news:

Mother's day is coming. And so what of it?
You know I would buy her
Flowers and chocolate.
Her favorite kind.
But her time ran out.
And I feel like one of those grains of sand
Left on the bottom.
Covered by a life that has ran out.
If only.
So many if onlys.
As though I could have done something
Anything
To slow it down.
Yet I only have the faintest memories
And even those have begun to fade.
You move through my dreams and memories
I strain to hear your voice in my ear
A mother's whispering
And unconditional love.
Would you say
You are proud of me?
Would you give
Me a hug?
Would you write me a postcard
From heaven?
Yet I know.
questions that will remain questions
And the storm rising inside of me
Will remain my entire life.
No one has ever measured up
To the role you played in
My life.
Sometimes I still look for you
In glimpses of other
Women.
But you are unfindable.
I must again
Grieve.
Lost.
Gone.
My tears have yet to run dry.

The Lovely Book

I often wait to write until I am inspired or moved. Sometimes I feel inspired but it's just not something I want the whole world to know about, but today, I am inspired.

My new favorite author is Stephanie Kallos. I read her second book, Sing them Home, first. This book was also great. Her stories center on family. On how families drift and flow, how they come apart and back together and sometimes how losing something can also heal something.

Yet her first book I loved even more, especially the characters. They had a depth and came to life in such a way that I miss them already. The book is called "Broken for You"

A quote:

"The broken are not always gathered together, of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. We speak of "senseless tragedies," but really: Is there any other kind? Mothers and wives disappear without a trace. Children are killed. Madmen ravage the world, leaving wounds immeasurably deep, and endlessly mourned. Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view. Maybe we chase them - clumsily, across railroad tracks and trafficked streets; over roads new-printed with their footsteps, the dust still whirling in the wake of them; through impossibly big cities peopled with strangers whose faces and bodies carry fragments of their faces and bodies, whose laughter, steadiness, pluck, stubbornness remind us of the beloved we seek. Maybe we stay put, left behind, and look for them in our dreams. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon. We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgriamage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way." (351)

And finally,

"Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love. The expicit beauty that comes not from the smoothness of skin or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience that has left its mark. Each face, each body is its own living fossilized record. A record of cats. combatants, difficult births; of accidents, cruelties, blessings. Reminders of folly, greed, indiscretion, impatience. A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized, and enshrined within and upon the body. You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful. If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off peices, rough and random and no two alike." (367)

I would recommend this book highly.

It contains a women suffering a brain tumor, an old house, a strange boarder or two, and a collision of lives. It's a collage of suffering and hope. It is real, raw, and yet lovely. I could only hope to write like this, I could only wish to write in such a way. The words crashing like waves. Waves that are neither this nor that, but everything at once. Words that not only tell fictional stories, but seem to tell my own.

I will fall for you over again

After a long week apart, sometimes it's hard to adjust back into each other's spheres. The weekends are sometimes hard on my fiance and I.

He's exhausted and I just want to see him. Yet so often the little things become big things and suddenly we're both moody about something completely irrelevant. It's usually because I've missed him all week and he's missed me all week and things that would have been talked about are pushed off for lack of quality time. Yet, I feel our maturity growing as we get moody, calm down, and then have fun an hour later doing something random. In this aspect I feel success. Because we have learned to get past moody phases. Moody phases and simply shutting down when moodiness occurs is one thing that gets us nowhere.

Yet. The weekends also are a time of renewal. And this weekend we just got to rest and relax today. Just spend the day in closeness to one another. I cannot wait. I cannot wait to have a home and a life with him. And fall more in love each day. Over again.

Jumping Cats

Sometimes I find in my most weary of days there is something to bring me a smile.

For example.

Picture 2 cats walking into your room and looking supiciously at a computer cord, the same computer cord that has been present for many months, as though it is a wild snake or other dangerous thing.

They sneak up on it and sniff cautiously and somehow don't notice that when the "snake" moves the human foot is moving it. Because of this lack of brain power, as they sniff at the cord the slightest jerk of the cord will send them jumping a kind of straight up and back jump. Ha.

Not only do they jump once, but after calming down they come back to sniff the cord and again leap back with an exetreme amount of worry. I have to admit pretty entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGSvlk6u1-I

Just Check out this video. No way you can resist laughing!

Hope and a Quick note on Relationships

A message of Hope.
Why do people run from it?
Do we really think,
Is it possible
That it's so hard to believe
Perhaps I am too much of a believer in grace
Yet I put my hope
In a rolled away stone
In the belief that my death,
Those who die of cancer, car accidents, heart attacks, old age, and others
Are dancing on streets that are golden.
Why is it too good to be true?
I admit that I've had my doubts and my struggles.
There have been times when I've wanted to run
From faith, from belief.
Yet still,
I tear up when people talk about heaven
No more death or tears.
It's enough for me to make me hold to the cross.
You see
It's not about religion, or exclusion, about being right about gay rights, or about abortion.
It's about a simple man
On a cross.
It's about an empty grave.
I'm not expecting everyone to believe what I believe
I'm only hoping that instead of seeing me as
A right-wing activist Christian,
To be considered
As a simple woman
Who makes mistakes
And admits she needs something to save herself from herself.
I choose for that to be Christ.
If you don't want Christians to judge you,
Hold back from judging them.
We are not so different.
Simple.
Not impossible.
Perhaps hope is something we all need.
Perhaps hope is something found in many different places.


Other notes:

One of the beautiful things about relationships is humility. It is being able to be upset and grouchy and tired at each other during the day and then to talk later, cut through all the crap, and say, "I love you. I'm sorry. Sometimes I'm not very good at this." Sometimes. Love, I think, is 80 percent humility. Because in loving someone it is pretty much a requirement that we be weak, vulnerable, that we let our defenses down, that we let someone tell us like it is, that we face up to telling them like it is with the risk of provoking anger or frustration. I'm learning how to do this with wisdom and grace. It's always easy to say something hard in a mean way, but it's difficult to find a way to think through the words that would invite intimacy as opposed to scarcasm or some other harsh response. I am thankful for the fruitfulness of humility in my relationship.

Play Time

Afternoons I get to fall into a place
It's a place where I can run and play
And remind myself that I'm not quite
Too old to play like a child.
I hang out with second graders
And together we make jokes about
Pirates "AARRRGHHH"
Her face gets all scrunched up as she copies me and says,
"AARRRGGGHH"
Another boy asks me to count the number of times he does push-ups.
And I twirl a jump rope as child after child jumps through
Singing silly songs.
The youngest one yells,
"Watch me"
And I enjoyably watch her do amazing stunts
At least amazing for a young one.
Today we made a human knot and untied ourselves
Yesterday we played silent ball
And since my arrival this week
We've been lining up and marching outside like soldiers
"hut two three four".
I don't have to get out my teacher voice all the time
Nor do I have to yell.
It's just hanging out for two hours with kids being
Kids.
And sometimes after a long day of having to yell at kids
It's nice just to play and watch them
Play.

Flash that guitar Back to the Past!

I watched a movie tonight which involved drumming and two unlikely characters coming together, one to learn music and one to teach it.

In some ways, I was reminded of many many lessons within a similar story. Two people, somewhat unlikely people, coming together. One to learn music and another to teach it.

My guitar lessons took place in days of grief and misery. Moping and sitting and staring were day to day activities, though I rarely told anyone about what I did in my spare time. Sometimes staring felt good because it meant I didn't have to think, I could just....be. And moping,

Well, I'm really good at self-pity sometimes. Especially when I feel like nothing is in my control.

Back to guitar. I remember desiring so very much to play. I loved how the acoustic sounded. So smooth and sharp at the same time. So many different sounds all at once. I had the lovely priviledge of knowing someone who wrote and played their own music on guitar. Her songs and passion inspired me and somehow we worked out that she would teach me guitar.

Some days were terrible. The lessons were painful for both of us. It's hard to enjoy music when you are wallowing and determined to be miserable. Yet she never gave up on me and I stubbornly refused to give up on myself.

You see, behind all the moping and self-pity, I was just a simple girl in love with guitar. It wouldn't matter if I wasn't awesome at it, nor did I really want to put in the time to perform with it, I just wanted to PLAY.

In some ways, my guitar skills feel like a miracle. Both my teacher and I had to go through the awkward road of figuring out my rhythm stunk because I was a leftie attempting to play righty.

I still remember the day she fixed up my guitar so I could play leftie. I was exetremely depressed. I had to relearn EVERYTHING. Terrible.

It's like learning to walk a certain way and then someone having to break your legs so you can walk the correct way. Painful.

To look back on those days is very strange sometimes. Though I still like to mope occasionally, I have found that there is usually some speck of joy to be found in living life. And I have learned that the longer one wallows the more one misses.

This is more of a reflection on my past. I think amongst all of it is a thankfulness to my past self for persevering and a thankfulness to my guitar teacher for taking so much time to teach me guitar and so many other things about life.

Two unlikely characters. Two guitars. And two different stories. Yet the beauty is in knowing that we didn't waste any of the time we had together. It is all very rich. Neither of us knew much about how to help each other. But I hope and believe it made life a little bit easier on both of us knowing that we had our guitars and our lessons and our passion.