Writing: 365 Altars
writing: AYWM
Beautiful Beliefs
daylight and happenstance
Audacious, persistent, and vibrant in its task, I believe the sun rises for reasons other than basic astronomy. No, the sun rises just as a patient mother does early in the morning with her child. The sun rises to soothe us from tumultuous slumbers and to blow away our nightmares. The sun brings daylight with our bottles and warmth with our lovies. She is what centers us when conflict would have us hurtling into the unknown.
I felt the sun weep for me, as mothers sometimes do, when I was so overwhelmed by hardship I could barely get out of bed. I refused to let her enter my room and kept myself hidden behind closed blinds and drapes. I barely ate and only slept, hiding from her and the world. My husband and family worried, whispered around me, “watched” me. What I thought was only a couple days stretched into ten. While I stared at the wall I could feel one day turn into the next. The sun did rise and set, hovering over me, wringing her hands over me. She would rise nervously to see if anything had changed. It hadn’t. I could see her skirts peek under my blinds and slowly I grew curious. How could the sun rise each morning when it never rose in my heart at all? I questioned the reasons behind her existence. The resiliency of her. I could probably do the same; in time. And I did. In time.
Like a poppy, I sought out the sun. I bloomed under her, following her with my body. She nurtured me, let me cling to her skirts, and play at her feet. I grew stronger with my mother, the sun. I worked in my garden while she tended the earth. I walked in the canyons while she whispered good night. I closed my blinds while she blew out the candles for the evening.
But then, just as we rejoiced with a baby, we mourned. Once again, I didn’t understand how the sun could still shine when it had set for me. How could she still rise? Though as I cried and cried, I could feel her fingers stroking my hair, the soothing whispers in my ear. The sun knew and she understood. How many life cycles have her eternal eyes witnessed, I wondered? How does she grieve? I thought and wondered about this beautiful mother, the sun, as we planted a tiny wisteria for the baby we lost. I watched the sun delicately play with its leaves and touch its tiny branches. The sun knows.
I believe the sun rises in spite of the burdens she must carry.
This post is inspired by my beautiful friend, Amy Palko, and a series of blogs she is writing — Beautiful Beliefs. If you would like to contribute, complete the sentence “I believe that…” and explore the reasons why you do. Visit her site to link your post to her series so we can all learn about each other.
pinned
ironically from pinterest
Like many people, I am enchanted by Pinterest. I frequent my boards to find recipes and activities for my children. I have found useful ideas for gardening and for my home. I enjoy looking at what friends and strangers alike have pinned and add their pins to my collection.
Last night, though, as I browsed through the various pictures and captions I found myself both laughing and sighing. I eventually shut it down. There is just so much “seeking” out there and not enough “finding”. So much “appearing” and not enough “being”. While I love seeing the great ideas people are pinning for themselves, their homes and their families, I can’t help but wonder how true they are being to themselves. It seems that for all the good it is to make goals to improve ourselves, there are times when it is easy for us to slip into “pinning” ourselves onto a board of public appearance — knowing that so much of the public will see what an awesome mother we would be if pin certain things, what a great homemaker we would be, how fashionable we are, or what great vacations we want to take.
It bothers me that clicking on a recipe for a natural face mask will take me to a blog that is entitled Hoping to be Made Beautiful*. I want to hug that woman and tell her, “You have always been made beautiful.” Seeing outrageously thin women as “motivation” for exercise and dieting illustrates the inundation of unrealism that permeates the atmosphere. Mothers who endlessly pin “fun mom” activities on “Do with kids” boards probably exhaust themselves before the activities begin. You can’t pin time — which is what matters most to kids. Perfect birthday parties, perfect weddings, baby showers, gender reveal parties (gag), perfect homes, perfect outfits…
Perfection cannot be pinned because perfection does not exist. A person can not pin his or her way to happiness because happiness is self-created and experienced.
Will I quit Pinterest? Of course not. I have pinned valuable things from it. I have unpinned several things, as well.
*not the actual blog title. obviously.
dancing with fear
I’ve been involved with various writing projects throughout the year so far, and yet I have let one slide a little bit. Every week I read through the emails from A Year With Myself and play hot potato with the possibilities of writing and thinking. Every week I casually let it slip by and allow myself the excuse that it is too late. Whoops, life got in the way.
Which is, of course, a complete and total lie. Life never gets in the way of anything. I get in the way of life.
And so today I have accidentally trapped myself in the house for three hours. (I’m drying strawberries in the oven, don’t ask.) So really, life has very much NOT got into the way today. Life is now sitting on my sofa downstairs watching The Food Channel and eating cookies. I decided to go back and really take some time with A Year With Myself.
When I first began writing for AYWM, I had decided I would do so as a way of leaving a journal for children. I wanted to improve myself as a woman and mother for them. I began to lose focus on that somewhere along the way. And so today I sorted through the chapters with that in mind, looking at them with renewed focus. I was able to sort out a few that I didn’t think could be answered with that commitment at heart, or were answered in other places (like my personal journal) and saved those that would reveal to my future who I really am.
Right now, my son thinks I am fearless. I laughed off cockroaches during our last vacation, I face down bully parents and tell off strangers who seem threatening to my children. I call people on cutting in line and I tell my kids to stand up for themselves. He remembers watching me pick up our grandma in my arms and carry her to her bed after she had fallen. He knows I can change tires on the car. He thinks I’m the toughest mom around for surviving the birth of his sister. To him, I’m indestructible.
My son has never seen me have any of my countless anxiety or panic attacks. He has never seen me become paralyzed with fear because of my agoraphobia. He doesn’t know that sometimes I’m terrified to even answer my phone or to go to Costco. He wouldn’t understand that the same mom who will show up to volunteer in classroom is the same woman who has to force herself out of the house some days.
There will be a time when both of children will understand. I will take them on a walk and I will tell them how I used to be. I will tell them about my old life and how it changed one day. I will tell them how even though there are days when I feel quite scared, I also feel quite brave. They will understand how courage isn’t always running into burning buildings; it is sometimes just opening the blinds. It is driving kids to school and going for ice cream. Courage is their mother. And maybe the joke will be on me because perhaps they will have always known.
Everyday I don’t give in to the darkness is a celebration. It is ice cream and streamers and trombone parades. Everyday I don’t give in to an event from a past is one more pinwheel in the grass.
Prompted by: ”Celebrate the ways in which you call on courage’” by Padma Maxwell for A Year With Myself
Guest Post
Today, you will find me guest posting at my awesome friend’s blog m.a.brotherton as part as his “Why God?” series. This is a series in which many bloggers answer the timeless question, “Why God, do I do this to myself?” I hope you enjoy the series as much as I enjoyed being a part of it.
Two Years
It’s been two years today since I’ve lost my baby. I’ve been anxiously watching my little wisteria for its blooms to brighten its stems, hoping to see the petals unfurl in the spring. Once again we were worried it hadn’t made it through the winter, the tree is week and constantly bends against the wind. Yet finally, this week, the buds opened and the pinkish white hopes bloomed. I was relieved.
This is the baby’s tree, planted soon after it was lost to me, and the tree continues to grow even as my grief begins to tuck itself away in my heart. Someone once told me I would soon forget about my baby; I wouldn’t even remember its existence let alone the day I lost my little sweet thing. I couldn’t comprehend that then and I still don’t. In my heart, I am still nurturing my baby, loving the child, marking its milestones. My baby would be 18 months old now. It would be surely walking, toddling around, reaching arms up to me and experiencing the world around us.
My baby is my baby, and someday I will hold the child in my arms. I will rock it to sleep and kiss its forehead and hold it to me. My baby will never be forgotten.
And so once again we made our pilgrimage to the Tulip Festival which has somehow become tied to the child. We had celebrated the baby with the tulips only one week before its loss two years ago, I had mourned my loss profoundly even last year though pregnant with the baby we have now, and we went again this year — pushing a stroller. I was reflective amongst the tulips this year. The tulips seemed brighter and more vivid to me, the weather was far more warm and pleasant.
I was happy. The grief I had carried over my lost baby was still there but it had changed. It no longer stung. It merely colored my heart, like a patina, showing age and experience but not affecting its value.
Two years ago I thought my world had collapsed around me. Two years later my world has been recreated. My work has only begun here; I have wisterias yet to grow and babies yet to rock.
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