EXHIBIT 2: WINTER SOLSTICE--the longest night

Winter Solstice—the longest night

22 December 2017, 3:00 am

Yesterday, I awoke feeling pretty crappy.  I wonder if my heart is acting funky.  Or maybe I am having some odd reaction to the dairy in last night’s meal. 

Then a new thought, maybe the planet is just too far from the sun.

If I am impacted by cloud cover and rainy days, maybe there’s something inside me reacting to the solstice.  After all, it is the darkest day of the year.

As a kid I understood that during the winter solstice the earth was actually closer to the sun than during the summer solstice and that the reason temperatures go down has to do with the tilt of the earth on its axis.  Our country is on the part that’s tilted away from the sun right now.  

The coolness of the solstice I was told was that around mid day the planet is supposed to be perfectly aligned so that you could sit an egg upright and it would balance.  

Yeah, that never worked for me.

Other than my excitement about the possibility of balancing eggs, I have paid very little attention to a solstice.

But about 12 hours ago, I decided to watch the night when I noticed her approach.  Evidence of her imminent arrival was announced in the quality of light that preceded her like fragrance on a breeze.   By 5:30 pm she owned the sky.  

In all these years and all the days in a given year I have never noticed the night like this.  

This night was deep dark, a dye enveloping the world outside my window.  

Uncompromising.  

Overwhelming.

Astonishing.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

I only saw night come in because I was watching.  What else?  What else have I been missing because i have been too busy to pay attention?

Then I see something.  Right here. God handing me another piece of evidence that He still loves women—

EXHIBIT 2:  the mystery and beauty of the long dark night

EXHIBIT 1: A good ass sentence

I wrote this sentence and that thing made me incredibly happy.  I was like

Now that’s a good ass sentence!

Clear evidence that God still loves women and writers.  

It wasn’t just a sentence.  It became a thread.  So I was able to pull it from the beginning of the chapter through the end of the chapter.  

It’s in a story I’m writing for my son who has been living apart from me for the past few months.  The inspiration is obvious.  It’s about a boy whose mother goes missing.

But I digress.  

I was telling you about evidence of God’s love for me found in this thread that I wrote.  I mean judge EXHIBIT 1 here for yourself:

EXHIBIT 1

The morning after the boys made a torch out of the broom, THE SKY BROKE OPEN.  Lightening split clouds with a tremendous crash.  Rain fell in sheets.  At Gibraltar AME church in South Boston, Miss Eula Bell taught the children to sing “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”  Miss Eula Bell said that it was a song of consolation—that children should trust everything to be all right no matter how many things seemed to be going wrong because God was big enough to hold the entire planet in His hands.  Being that big meant He could absolutely handle every problem that a tee-night-chy person had.  Even the biggest problems were small to Him.  Yet and still, God cared about every little thing—“The whole world in His hands.”  Ric sang along because the song assured him that he didn’t have anything to worry about—ever.  But that morning, THE SKY BROKE, sounding to Ric just like God had dropped the earth on a cold, stone floor and cracked it.  

You see that?  I’m telling you that shit is good.  THE SKY BROKE. That thing right there is it!  That shit makes me happy!  

In and of itself it ain’t nothing really special.  I know.  I say that expression all the time.  The rain comes down so hard during a thunderstorm and it seems like the sky broke.  

But then see what I did there, I made the expression even more literal—

the sky 

is the glass 

of a snow globe.  

And it broke 

because God 

dropped it on the ground.  

If that good ass writing ain’t proof that God loves me then I don’t know what is!  

Presenting Evidence that God Still Loves Women and Writers

I am picking up this blog to document my journey back to health.  This is my reboot. A lot has changed in five years.  My original opening in 2012 was this:

This fall I sent my eldest child to college while preparing to send the next, following just 21 months behind.  And I have a third child I am preparing for kindergarten.  Despite all my railing against being defined by my status as a wife and mother, these are the most defining facts of my life.  Getting married and being fertile is not all that I have been, however.  I am a published author.  I have a PhD in English because I thought it was a safe field and because I thought a woman married to an artist–print maker and sculptor–needed to have a profession that would always be valued.  Ha!  I should say that again:  Ha!

So this is me, Valerie, introducing myself in this inaugural Sea Notes blog–mother, wife, author, and teacher with the audacity to believe that God still loves women and writers.

20 December 2017

Changing my mind

Night time is the hardest.  As a woman of a certain age, I often wake regardless.  A pin point of light in the wrong color—the yellow dot on the cable box, the orange “Visio” on the bottom of the tv, the white light of my husband’s phone, or the blue light of the heart monitor I just unplugged—will awaken me.  My husband’s phone is not here right now.  It is with him in another city.

I am here alone in our bed.  Anxious.

The light is not the only thing that awakens me.

Last night I called him and asked him to tell me one thing that I could do to help slow my heart from racing. 

Stretch

Should I stand up and do that now?

No.  Don’t stand.  Sit.

Now?

Yes.

I sit up in the bed.  My covers still over my legs.  It’s cold in the room.  I am cold.  I place my feet together.  I bend at the waist.  I reach.  

After the past week, my back is tight.  I have not been moving enough.  

Tonight, I awaken.  1:00 am.  A rattlesnake in my dream.  In the building where I work.  A colleague asks if I have considered it.  I had.  Then awake.  

I begin my mediation.  The one I started last night.  I am not very good at mediation.  My mind races like my heart.

Be Still

Be Still

Be Still

I picture a rock.  It’s dark.  Smooth like water rubbed across it for a long time.  Smooth.  Dark.  I do not get to the end of the mediation phrase.  I stay with that part.  That is the part I need in my spirit right now.  It is not working.  My thoughts are racing.  I think of my husband.  I am wondering. 

My presence is not required there.

My presence is not required there.

For every thought that strays from my mediation

My presence is not required there.

I sit up in my bed and reach for my ankles.  I hold on.  My back is tight.  Stiff.  I hold my ankles.  Breathe.  

Be Still

Be Still

Be Still

My heart slows.  My mind slows.  My back aches feeling like one of those rusted out bridges in Pittsburgh.