Tag Archives: Writing

The Good Old Days

09 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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My husband and I paused everyday life last night to mark the birthday of my first-born.  I’ve been a mother thirty-one years now; if you’re wondering, it seems every bit of thirty-one years, as I think on all the intervening events that have marked the passage of time.

We enjoyed a fine dinner in a nostalgic red leather booth at Cattleman’s Steakhouse, Oklahoma’s only claim to fame in the travel book, 1000 Places to See Before you Die. 1000 things Life does have a way of coming fast and furious, especially in your thirty-something years.  By day Kate is a full-time nurse.  By night and day, Kate juggles the competing demands of wants and needs that come with a family of six.

As I listened to her talk, I was struck by how similar Kate’s life was to mine at her age.  Newly married for the second time, her challenging career, her challenging home life with all the children’s activities — well, it’s enough to lose sleep over.  And Kate does.  She mentioned at dinner that she was unable to sleep the night before;  ironically, Kate was watching a television show on travel destinations in the middle of the night.

Though I suffer my fair share of sleepless nights, it’s worse to imagine your children fighting the same battle.   Usually, after an hour of tossing and turning, I get up to read a little.  Or like tonight, when my head is so full of thoughts of Mom’s storage shed and Kate’s birth night, I find it best just to release the spinning thoughts and anchor them to a line of words.  It’s an act of discipline, as if to write is to mutter sleepily….”Now stop your whining.”

I always lost sleep towards the end of a pregnancy.  My mother was living six hours south when I went into labor on a Wednesday night thirty-one years ago.  Kate was born early Thursday morning  — 1:28 am to be precise — and I recall being so tired and sore after it was all over, all I wanted to do was sleep.  Had it not been for the nurses who came in to check on this or that, I would have. 

My parents and sister arrived soon after Kate’s birth.  And Mom stayed behind a week to help me ease into my motherhood groove.  I’ll never forget those first days with Mom and Kate; even now, I can see Mom busy working in the kitchen, helping me with all the laundry  — how can one little baby cause so much dirty laundry?  —  and when all the work was done, Mom kept her hands busy by making a few crafts, including a nice big Christmas stocking for Kate.

I take out the memory of those days again and hold it up to the light.  How young my mother was then — both of us really, though it didn’t seem so with Mom now a grandmother and me now a mother.  Why is it that we never quite see life as it really is, while we are in the midst of living it?  Why does the passage of time and hindsight make the past more clear and even more precious? 

These thoughts remind me of a few words from a Carly Simon tune where she continues to refrain that these are the good old days.  These are words I need to hear and bear in mind as I continue to live my everyday life.  These are the good old days.

Yet, as good as the message is, it’s not a ‘just right’ fit for Kate’s 31st birthday and where she is in life.  Instead, I offer a variation on the same theme, from another Carly tune that I think she’ll recognize.  The words of this song, published in my 31st year, remind that if we’re willing to play the game of LIFE, that second and third chances happen; that the best kind of travel is our own time travel though life; and that seasons and reason to celebrate are always coming around again.  Just like a string of birthdays.

But in the meantime, I hope Kate relishes this one.  Because from where I sat, this birthday is already a good old day.

Faith versus Words

05 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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I’ve been working on next week’s session of Everyday God, the monthly contemplative prayer class I facilitate at St. Luke’s.  The work is still mostly in my head, though some has made it to paper.  But with a week to go, it’s time to pour it all out and to distill what’s there.

 This Month - Scriptural Prayer with Mother Mary

Yet, in the memory of Mother Mary, I ponder at the fragility of words, what to say and leave unsaid.  Following the advice of a trusted friend, I try to rely less on my words and more on creating space for wonder and holy encounter.

Words don’t always write easily.  Yet, even when words come they are easily misunderstood.  And with misunderstanding, comes the temptation to pile on more words in an attempt to smudge the lines of perceived difference.

Part of the splendor and difficulty in writing is not being able to anticipate how others might interpret the thoughts laying underneath the written word.  That particular line of words may send you, the reader, to something or someone or somewhere from your past or present.  The words may open up pain.  They may bring joy.

That italicized line of words simply took me the old adage that actions speak louder than words.  Actions speak louder than words?  Maybe.  But even in action and inaction, there’s room for interpretation.  There’s opportunity for deception, even for the actor.

I cannot control how others perceive my actions or my inactions.  In the end, I simply do my best, and trust that all will be well.   I do my best and let it go.  I live in the mystery of difference and appreciate it for what it is, a opportnity to celebrate, a opporunity to learn, as long as I remain open to the mystery.

In the end, especially in my labor and delivery of  any work of words, I rely on faith rather than words, the Word rather than words.

I hope.

Waiting with Mary

29 Thursday Oct 2009

Posted by in Soul Care

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A Place to Wait with Words

A Place to Wait with Words

Yesterday’s post proved cathartic.  I am now sitting at my cluttered writing desk.  And with fingers on keyboard, I ponder life  two thousand years ago, in the village of Nazareth, and wonder about the young Mary’s everyday life — before it was all shaken and stirred by that scary angel who dropped in without calling.

Mary is the one to ponder and treasure words in her heart.  St. Luke says this all the time about Mary in the gospel he wrote about Mary’s first-born son.  And like anyone the least bit connected with Jesus, and as mothers everywhere tend to be with any of their children at one time or another, Mary not only pondered, but she would come to wonder how the world was treating her child.

Like Mary, I tend to ponder and wonder at life.  I treasure words, like those written in The Luminous Word — a small Advent booklet that arrived in last week’s mail — where author Jan L. Richardson sees a different Mary than I, on that famous occasion where she entertained her unexpected angel.  Ms. Richardson writes: 

“She is reading when the angel appears.  Or so the medieval artists told it; in so many of the paintings of the Middle Ages, Mary holds a book as Gabriel greets her.  She is reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, sometimes, or, in a lovely turn of anachronism, from a Book of Hours.  This is a woman, the artists suggest, who is steeped in words.  Long before choosing to bear the Word, before agreeing to become the mother of God, Mary had been immersing herself in the ancient texts, letting the prayers and stories that had spiraled through the generations unwind in her.”

The author’s words paint a lovely vision.  But it doesn’t quite mesh with the picture I carry around of the young Mary’s life.   Like most Jewish girls of the time, Mary probably could not read; instead, I think Mary’s education would have been more practical, centered around the tasks of everyday life  —  making meals, tending and mending laundry, and keeping house.  It was neither glamorous nor romantic.

This was Mary’s lot and I don’t imagine she had time to sit and contemplate the deeper mysteries of life.  Until, that is, when mystery invaded her life, making the act of contemplation no longer an idle luxury.

Mary carried mystery in her womb, nurtured him at her breast and watched over  him until he was grown, when she did what all good mothers past and present are called to do:  She let her child go, to live his own life, however he saw fit.  

Then, out of sight, but never out of mind or heart, Mary waited.  She waited to hear a word from Jesus, while she went about her everyday tasks and waited on her children still at home.  The waiting was hard.  I imagine Mary’s waiting was far worse than waiting in the Wal-Mart checkout line.