I declare today 6 June 2018 the first annual celebration of life day.  I celebrate you!

"come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed."--Lucille Clifton

#celebratelife

EXHIBIT 4: Peace while I wait

Love is patient

That is a metaphor.  Meaning the author is conveying an idea about “love” by showing us something different.  A metaphor is an equation that presents the thing that we don’t know as the same as a thing that we do know, i.e. A = B. 

A Love = B patience.

The problem for me is that while I think I have loved, I am not certain about the patience.  Certainly, one does not stay married for 25 years without having been at least somewhat patient.  The question for me is what’s the measure of patience?  Does it have a limit?  If so, then have I hit it, gone beyond it, or fallen short of the mark?

Patient means to be at peace while one waits. 

I must admit, that is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about love.  It ain’t the second or third or fourth thing either.  But it is the first thing that our pastor said to us about love when she officiated over our wedding ceremony. 

That day was hot.  And so was I, at least just before the wedding got started.  Our ceremony was held up and I was sitting in a car with my father waiting—impatiently—for the ceremony to begin.  There were other challenges that day too.  My train was put on inside out and I had to correct it on the way into the chapel.  My photographer took terrible photographs.  Some big things.  Some small things.  But a simple, union was consecrated on that date.  And so it was beautiful.

Weddings require a measure of patience.  Marriages require more.

Love is at peace while one waits.  Waits?  For what?

For whatever.  But chances are if one is waiting then it is likely for something that one wants IMMEDIATELY.  So if the waiting proves too difficult.  Too hard.  One imagines that the love has been injured.  That it’s been marred.

But no:  Love is patient. 

So the difficulty in waiting, the perception of injury happens elsewhere.  Not to love—because love waits patiently.  And it doesn’t say for how long.  Sometimes the waiting seems to be too long.  But too long for whom? 

Love waits peacefully.

So the perception of waiting “too long” happens elsewhere. 

Time.  The perception of a limit.  An expiration date.  That is not love. 

After a quarter century of marriage, this simple revelation is clear evidence that God is giving me another opportunity to get things right.  

Now THAT is loving.

Exhibit 3: the will to love

Today after 28 years (nearly 26 years married) my husband and I chose to love each other again.

  

He got up and went out into the cold winter’s morning for donuts.  We are together in a new city with our youngest son.  We don’t know where the good donuts are so he looked up “donuts near me” on his phone.  We debated the names and counted the stars and the number of ratings.  Then we made a decision.  4.9 miles away.

After he returned with the donuts, he and I went into the kitchen together and cooked pancakes, eggs, bacon.  I washed grapes and heated chi tea.  I know how he likes his eggs cooked, how much cheese, how long on the heat.  He showed me the donuts he bought with me in mind.  We ate our meal together.  We laughed together.  We touched.

Our family is aging, along with our love. 

In 1992, when we headed to MI the first time, we got in the car in DE wearing shorts and tank tops only to discover that August nights in Michigan can be like fall.  We were kids, newlywed, bright and in love.  New love is great because it elevates and titillates and giggles and tickles and makes us feel alive. 

In 2018, we have returned under very different conditions.  We have property and kids and cars and jobs as well as nearly 30 years of experiences that run the gambit.  We have doctors and lawyers and networks.  We have losses and gains, portfolios, and such.  We both have winter coats, too, at the ready. 

This love here knows something about the cold.  And it dares to love regardless.

My husband chose, today, to zip up, hat up, glove up, boot up, to venture out again—providing clear evidence that God still loves this woman.

Life is not story

3 January 2018

My husband and I watched Armageddon, one of those old action films that pictures Bruce Willis as hero.  He’s a cranky oil driller who’s called upon by the US government to save the world from impending disaster in the form of a giant asteroid barreling at incredible speed toward earth.  I don’t like movies that hinge on high tension.  My husband knows that.  

He told me, “Don’t worry honey.  The white man is there to save us.”

  

We laughed.

Yes.  Armageddon is one of those tales that projects an image of the Nation as like the film’s unlikely savior—raw, unrefined, hard working, devoted, honorable, and sacrificial.  Messiah.

Perhaps such films would matter more if they proved that the country was aspiring to be those things.  But they don’t.

This film is but one of a trillion examples of the way we project that which we hope others will believe about ourselves.  Rather than an action flick, it should be considered a farce given the violence and destructive nature of our country with it’s weaponry and endless wars and guns and desire for walls.  We are far more likely the harbinger of death, than the belly that bears the world’s salvation.    

Stories like this one demonstrate our ability—and I’m not sure who the “our” here is but I suspect is a very BIG “our”—to hold contradictions in our minds.  We have a tremendous capacity to tell stories about ourselves which are in blatant conflict with reality.  And to accept those stories into our psyche.

I watch this film aware that the “our” here includes me.

My health—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—no longer seems able to tolerate such contradictions.  I am rejecting them.  Not righteously like a Saint committing herself to walking barefoot among the poor.  But involuntarily like a patient with lupus whose white blood cells have turned on vital organs.

To cite the problem is one thing.

To identify a solution an entirely different thing.

So I begin by turning toward the thing that is most painful to me at the moment.  Feeling it.  Fingering the jagged edge of it.  The pain comes when that thing impales me.  From the outside.  Forced inward.

I want to point and scream at the one who hurt me.

Then I stop and turn my gaze elsewhere.  Toward a playback of security camera footage taken of me when I was not aware.  And I watch myself.  Not in the Hollywood version, but in the grainy night light of the alley.  

I weep and wail at the me who hurt others.  

In the movies, the film ends after passing through the editing room.  I love editing film.  That’s where stories are made.  

Life is not story.

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!