Becalmed

A baked ship on a listless sea lies limply on the waves.  White light tramples on the splintery boards as the vessel rocks in the glare of the sun.  Deck is bare and sail is empty; the lonely helm creaks as the weak current catches the rudder.

I stumble up on deck, a bottle sloshing in my hand.  My eyes are unable to focus; puking over the side helps the hangover.  And I look over to the wheel from the railing, remembering the storm that drove me below decks.

The storm came quickly; I had not been scanning the skies for the hints. Suddenly the rain had begun; a gust pummeled the sail as the tide kicked at the rudder beneath.  I clung to the wheel, already straining to breathe, to stand, to steer.  I lashed the wheel as another of the storm's tantrums pounded down upon the deck with heavy waves grasping at my shoes.  I battled over to the mast and fought to furl the hysterical sail. The salt and the raindrops stabbed into my bare hands, as the storm's shrieking began to grow.

Louder it shrieked as I struggled to stand on slick boards, and I fell onto my knees and my left wrist as I abandoned the possessed kite to get to the wheel.  I felt the warm blood on my palm briefly repel the ice of the deluge, until the salt dug into my broken skin and began to scream.  Numb hands clamped onto wooden spokes, and I fought to stay my course, battled to find the way as my own ship bucked against me.  Over and over again the spokes wrenched free and battered my knuckles, until I could no longer use my hands.  The storm mounted and roiled and ripped the energy from my limp body.  Salt water poured under my eyelids and into my ears, and scrubbed my throat raw.  I knew I had to stay my course, but I could only see the storm.

I leapt from the helm before it struck me; it began to spin wildly in the chaos, the ship her own master now.  I ducked under the boom as the wind cackled along the sheet of the sail, and fled below decks.  I uncorked a bottle of whiskey as the ship bucked and weaved as she wished.  I then looked to the opposite bunk where my father had remained asleep.  I had not thought to wake him.  And the wind whistled as I drunk myself into distraction and sleep.

I lay on the railing under the angry sun, an aimless failure on a becalmed sea.  Sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down the channel of my spine.  I had failed.  Another rush of sea water and whiskey races up from my stomach and back into the waves.

And then I hear the footsteps on the planks.  And want to follow my vomit.

I slither to the boards and hide behind my knees, my hand still on the railing.  His eyes are clear as they rise from below the deck.  The bottle rolls as the ship tilts, and I pitch my head over the side again to expel another mouthful of bile.  I feel it dribble down my chin.  I cinch my eyes shut against the waves, my knuckles tight and white.  The boots stop behind me.  I brace for blows and bellowing.  I've lost our bearings; I should've stayed the course; I should've woken him up to help.

I suddenly feel his hands beneath my armpits and he grunts to lift me to my feet.  He steadies me by the shoulders as I stare at his shirt buttons.  A sigh; he cups a hand behind my head and pulls me to his chest, his left arm clamped around my back.  I press my face into his shirt and wrap my arms around his middle until my breathing slows to meet his.

He pushes me back again to look into my face, combing back the salty tangles from my face.  His thumb finds the sticky of the vomit on my chin.  He reaches into his front pocket for his handkerchief and wipes the spit away, and murmurs, "I'd glad you're ok."

We Dying Immortals

A few months ago, my boss took everyone in the office out for drinks to celebrate a new big client that one of the lawyers had just signed on.  We cheerfully paraded out of the office at 4:30, ready to drink to the occasion.  The evening sun sparkled through the tall bar windows on my glass of rum and coke as we swathed ourselves in a haze of laughter at the corner of the bar.  A few stools down the other legal receptionist, a middle-aged Southern blonde, politely declined the appetizers because her husband was already at home cooking dinner for her.  One of the lawyers joked that her husband was trying to get her in the mood; she replied with a smile and quickness, "He doesn't have to work that hard to get me in the mood."  We all laughed.

That laughter has gone.

At the beginning of October, she called off work one Thursday.  She had taken her husband to the hospital the previous night with severe abdominal pain, and the doctors couldn't identify the cause.  After several tests, he was diagnosed with 2 forms of cancer, one of them very advanced.  She texted our office paralegal the following Thursday when their doctor suggested hospice.  She wanted to get a second opinion, but they never got the chance - they were informed that Saturday that he had only days to live.  When I came into work the following Tuesday, one of my coworkers gently informed me that he had passed away on Sunday.  10 days.  10 days between fine and gone.  I couldn't taste my food the rest of the day.

The funeral was that same Tuesday night, and everyone in the office went.  We took up three rows of the too-narrow chairs; my knees banged against Dave's on the one side and one of the lawyer's on the other.  And the body of a man I had only met once in my life at a summer work cookout was in a powder-blue casket at the front of the room; I had a clear view of his face for the whole sermon.  I felt awkward and helpless.

I brought no tissues with me.  I sat dryly through the slideshow, the stories, and the service.  I heard one of the lawyers' wives sniffling a few chairs away as the pastor spoke.  We all rose after the service ended, and through the arms and coats I could see that little Southern blonde walk straight to the casket, followed by her adult son.  I watched her bend over his face, her curls falling over her shoulder as she kissed his forehead and said many soft and broken things to him.  My insides wrenched.  I should not have been able to see that.  And the tears came then.

I clasped Dave's hand tight as we crossed the damp parking lot of the funeral home, still feeling that ill helplessness.  I found myself touching him and looking at him more that night, instinctively seeking to imprint his details on my mind.  I wanted to count the freckles on his shoulders because I had been reminded that my time to look at them is shockingly short.

Yet my eyes can see so little.  All I've seen is passing, a fleeting projection.  My eyes tell me that since I can no longer see her husband, since he is no longer manifested in the body of that shy-smiling man, that he is gone and done.  But my eyes are liars.  We humans are too grand and immense for our own bodies; and how little we know of it, both for ourselves and others.  

"I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for," John Mayer crooned.  That's true.

Decades ago, C.S. Lewis wrote:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

I cling to that truth now with my face briefly lifted to the ignored inevitability of loss.  I love, therefore I have much to lose.  But all those I love are more than I can know, creatures transcending the physical world I live in with them.  In losing the mortal form of one I am reminded of the immortality of others; that fills me with very real terror, and acute pangs of hope.

So I laugh loudly and count Dave's freckles again.

Normal

Normal is underrated.

Three weeks ago, I had a cyst removed, and for the next week I was in post-scalpel misery.  Even while popping painkillers like Pez candy, I was rendered virtually immobile.  I couldn't lie on my back.  I couldn't walk.  I couldn't sit.  Not without pain rocketing throughout my body.  While lying on the floor with an oversized pillow and watching bad TV drama to distract from the throbbing, I often thought back to before, when I stupidly took those normal actions for granted.

Those times without are when we understand the value of normal.  It's when I'm at the bottom of the deep end that I realize how sweet air is.  It's when I'm too busy to eat lunch that I get to dinner and remember how good food tastes.  Normal is a delicacy we've become accustomed to dining on.

Being married to and loving Dave feels so normal now, almost alarmingly normal.  Telling him I love him is part of my daily routine.  Watching him sleep while I get ready for work is a daily treat.  It's really good, but why does it feel so normal?  Water-drinking air-breathing food-consuming normal?

Dave is a river and I am a trout.  That's what being with Dave feels like - I'm a fish in water.  Loving Dave is like breathing - it's a natural part of my body's construction, like a dormant organ that inflated after I began to love him and starting pumping.  But I have to remind myself that this wasn't always normal.

I remember the previous unrest in my life, the ground's constant heaving and the humidity of tears.  Family crises were normal; earthquakes and volcanoes tore through my life's landscape for years.  And I remember what a bastion he was to me, and continues to be.  I've forgotten what life lived on a fault line was like, I'm now so used to walking on solid earth.  It is so unbelievably incredibly normal.

And it's because of this I understand better than ever why not having someone to love aches, why losing the one you love wounds.  Because we were built to love, just as we were all born to breathe.  It's in the blueprints.  And we forget the fantastic normalcy  of breathing our beloveds in and out every day.

Breathe!  Breathe in the normal things of your life!  Breathe them in deep; catch the warmth and the scent of it.  Because there are many abnormally normal beautiful things in our lives, and you don't want to miss them just because you get them every day.

Wholeness

I hate my flaws. 

I hate having them, hate seeing them, and the work of hiding them.

But life seems to breed the issues I'm so eager to conceal, as though every day is a walk through a thorn bush wearing a pale silk dress.  I just want to make it through the day with my clothing in one piece, but the environment makes that impossible.  Of course I'll lie down at the end of the day bloodied and scraped with rips and tears.  But why do so many other people around me seem to reach their beds unscathed?  Is it something wrong with me?

So I'll stay awake late into the night, needle and thread hacking my frayed dress back together.  Because what if they see?  I can't let them see the holes.  Because that's the message out there: You must not be flawed.  Why else do more than a million people a year inject Botox into their aging cheeks?  People flash white smiles and don't talk about their teeth whiteners, just like magicians don't reveal their secrets.

That's what we want.  We want The Secret.  That Secret I pretend to know while I'm stitching my shredded dress.  We may be adults now, but we still play Pretend.  All we did is sophisticate the rules.  We're told that we should not be flawed, so we strut like we aren't, lest they all see the patches.

We lie to each other.  We go to lavish lengths to prove to others, and ourselves, how "good" things are.  We tell each other about all the good things we have, like our money or our wives or our children or our beachside cottage.  And we genuinely believe that satisfaction comes in these forms.  Yet even those who have all that lie down at night with holes to patch.  And worse, the patches ravel: divorces, death and bankrupcy...  We don't have enough fingers to plug the dam.  

Oh, what we would give to be whole.

Isn't that what drives us?  Isn't that what all this frenetic boasting and American Dream-ing is all about?  The holes of our brokenness throb to be filled, so we seek to find what fills them.  We seek wholeness and contentment.

But with all our effort there's still a draft, still a leak.  We remain unfixed and disrepaired.

An ancient fable tells us that demons are fallen angels.  Man is described as "fallen" as well.  And wherever we started from, falling into the thorn bush means something was broken.  What good is a patch for my bruise when the bleeding is internal?

Here's the paradox that comes with healing and wholeness: I must admit to my tears and breaks, and admit that I cannot fix them.  Physically, what else is a doctor's visit?  After 3 days of limping around on a broken ankle insisting that "I'm fine", I will have to reach a point where I admit that my body is broken and that I cannot fix it myself.  That principle translates spiritually.

We don't like that. We want to fix ourselves. We want to own our wholeness with pride, because everyone else seems to have it. But everyone who struts is lying, and at the bottom line it just doesn't work that way.   An engine cannot fix itself - there has to be a mechanic.

What a terrifying thought to people who think that they themselves are their only hope, to sit on their broken ankle with no doctor to go to.

The God called Yahweh claims to be a jack-of-all-trades, the key to that wholeness our souls cramp hungrily for.  If He had a truck, he would have everything from bolts of cloth to bags of concrete in the back.  And when we admit that we cannot fix ourselves, He claims to be the one who can.  I picture Him wearing a leather jacket and having grease-stains on His hands from all the work He does.

He'll wait for me to call before He comes.  And when I show Him the muddied bloodied tatters of my thorn-wrenched dress, He trades it for a beautiful new one.  Because wholeness isn't patching the rags I have.

It's admitting I need to be given something new.

Bare Feet

I have this lovely pair of brown flats that I like very much.  However, judging by what they did to my heels when I wore them last week, the love is hardly mutual.  In the time it took me to walk to my first class from the bus stop, I was already limping and fantasizing about Neosporin and a box of Band-Aids.

My heels were lucky enough to be raw on a warm and dry day, and the bulk of my path happened to be across the campus Oval, a grassy park area criss-crossed with sidewalks.  With my shoes in hand, the undamaged soles of my feet padded through the soft Bluegrass blades of the Oval's circumference.  And I endured a surprise lesson on the terrain.  

In that short walk, my toes sunk into a miniature swamp, and then were covered by a patch of sand on the opposite side of a sidewalk.  One moment the turf was luxurious, then a looming pine tree would choke out the grass with its shade and needles.  And just when I'd think I'm in the clear again, I realized from the acorn lodged in my arch that a fruitful oak is nearby.  

What must life have been like before shoes?  Or when all we had were animal-skin moccasins?  How slow would we have walked, and what would we have known?  With bare feet, we would've found the rich damp soil to plant our farms.  We would've seasoned our meals with the herbs we crushed while walking, and felt the hoofprints of the deer we tracked.  Identifying trees would be easy after picking out enough pine needles and crab apple pits from our soles.  Our paths would not have traveled as far, but we would've intimately known our homeland.  

With winter at the door, I know I'll readily forget this when standing in a six-inch January snow drift.  But when spring comes back again, I'll wonder what I'm missing.

Autumn

Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off.  The sun falling upon the leaves of her garments, her cheeks and fine clothes blush one more time before she starts taking off the beautiful layers of summer.  Summer-green pumpkin vines bulge with warm orange, and corn husks open to reveal checkered orange and rust-red.  She unfolds her arms and apples come spilling out into pie crusts and cider pitchers, herself a cornucopia of bounty.  She laughs in the plenty and dusts her hands on her cornfield apron.

She smiles first when someone bites into that tart early apple.  There is always a piece of hay in her hair and a pie on her sill.  Her scent is sweet in the corn maze and the child's trick-or-treat bag; she smells of warmth and change.  

But she never visits long, with her rosy orange cheeks and gentle breath.  Because Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off.  And the apple trees are shaken and picked clean, and the pumpkin vines shrivel and turn brown, and every day another tree loses its leaves, and she is a little more naked.  October is her festival, and as the month ends the orange in her cheeks begins to pale.  The last of the leaves are firey on dark branches now clearly showing through the last of her veils.  She gathers the final stitches of her rich clothing around her as the cold slowly pulls them away, an icicle for an empty cornucopia.  Until she lies quiet on a field of snow with dark eyes and arms, the white of her skin exposed now that all her colors have gone.

So we hang colored Christmas lights in her hair until the leaves return.

Kite

(I wrote this back in March)

Writing is flying a kite, and as of late I have been trying to fly it with a stiff iron pipe. Holding the cold metal in my hand I should know better – I’m merely trying to hold my kite to find the pre-approved Jesus section of the sky.  And I’ve endured enough sub-par creativity to know what a failure kite-flying is under such stiff direction.

I pull a loose yellow cord, bright with hope and fearful lack of control, from my front pocket to attach to the kite.  The bright cloth dangles loosely from the string, and perspiration rolls from my palm to dampen the cord.  What control do I now have?  A running start of inspiration, a frantic toss into the air, and dragging the kite along until it catches the winds and begins to climb.  The wind bucks and weaves, bellows and quiets, and the satiny square floats upon the gusts, what I can only pray are the breaths of the Spirit.  

This is no child’s kite, to crash into branches and electrical wires with laughter, because my nerves have been sewn into the kite and my pulse is visible in the string.  Crash it may and crash it will, but I crash with it.  Tear a hole in the fabric and bleeding scrapes appear on my hands; bend the frame and my bones begin to ache.  Yet once again, I will coil the cord and gather my feet and relaunch.  I will crash and crash and crash again, but I must get up each time.  Cord taut, stained red, I was built to fly.