Shooting stars…
I heard somewhere that there are people who have lived their lives in
big cities who have never once seen a star by looking into the sky.
There seems to be something terribly sad about that, that they never
got out of the city, but more that they can’t just look up and see the
stars–even though we no longer use the stars to tell us where we are,
when you can look up into a sky full of stars, you get the sense of how
big the universe really is. After having family fun tonight, we got out
of the pool and laid down flat in lawn chairs and watched the sky until
midnight. My son got three wishes out of three shooting stars, my
daughter caught two, and then finally perseverance paid off and I was
able to see one as well. The big dipper sat in all its glory over the
garage, and we watched numerous planes and satellites move across the
night sky with an odd juxtaposition of a quiet night sky combined with
examples of the busy-ness of the world around us. There was a beautiful
breeze going on and I was once more struck with how wonderful it is to
watch the trees dance and hear them rustle at night. There are many
wonderful places that I have been, and many beautiful places I want to
go to some day…but there was no where I would have rather been
tonight than laying in the dark with my family enjoying a beautiful
July night sky.
When the sky talks…
I’m sitting on my front porch listening to the sound of rain beating
down on the aluminum roof, thunder seems to roll out from one end of
the sky to the other and fade off into the distance, a slow deep rumble
instead of the sometimes sharp cracks of thunder that are often heard,
but not tonight, tonight is deep rolling thunder. Once the rumble fades
into the distance, the neighborhood lights up with quick flashes of
lightening. All this is repeated over and over, always the dinking
sound of the rain on the aluminum roof drumming out a cadence to the
sound of the storm. I have a friend who moved from this area to north
eastern Maine where are there are few thunderstorms, she has told me on
more than one occasion that she misses the lightening storms, and I
can understand why. I remember camping in a tent as a little girl with
my family, I can still remember the sound of the rain on the roof of
the tent, it was a more muted sound as it hit tight fabric rather than
shiny metal and the lightening made shadows stand out in sharp contrast
as the inside of the tent flared to light with its flashes. Laying in
the tent with my mom and my dad and my brothers, I don’t have any
memory of being afraid, I just remember loving the sound of the rain. I
remember one time when I was growing up when it started raining while
my older brother and I were outside, but the most amazing thing was, we
could see the line where it went from raining, to not raining at all.
One of us could stand in the rain and the other stand outside the rain
and be perfectly dry–it was like magic. I never saw anything like that
again until I was a teenager in Togo, West Africa, I was staying at a
blind school in a valley surrounded by low mountains, standing outside,
we watched a wall of rain sweep down the mountain, across the valley,
then across the yard and right over the top of us–over almost as soon
as it started–it washed over us and everything it left behind was
washed clean in a natural baptism. There is something sacred about rain
and I can’t help but wonder what it’s saying when the sky talks at
night.
Food as an experience…
I have to say that I have never understood the concept of eating
food as an experience, not just for sustenance. I understand eating at
a nice place, appreciating good food and such, but not as an experience
in and of itself–not, that is, until tonight.
I am having a “girls weekend” getaway with my lovely friend and as a
kick off to our weekend of skydiving, knitting, and shopping, she
treated me to a restaurant called The Melting Pot–a
restaurant specializing in the art of Fondue, and let me tell you, it
was an art! This was no quick eat, chat, and leave, but a leisurely,
2.5 hour, four course meal that was the most fun I’ve had eating a meal
in my life. It starts out with a fondue pot of Swiss cheese with
flavorings and wine mixed in–bowls of apples, mixed vegetables, and
chunks of different breads. Nearing the end of this first course, I
realized I was in trouble and would need to pace myself! Next was a
salad, the house dressing was really delicious. Third round we chose a
vegetable bullion base with some seasonings and they brought out all
sorts of dippings sauces to compliment the platter of lobster, tiger
shrimp, steak, filet mignon, salmon, pork, chicken, mushrooms, chicken
potstickers, and probably something else I’m forgetting along with a
big bowl of large mixed vegetables all cut into two bite size pieces.
What fun to pick out “what will I cook next” keeping an eye on the next
morsel while eating the previous one, full of, “Oh yum, have you tried
this yet,” and “Watch out for your salmon as it’s getting away”. All
together the food was probably not more than you get in an oversized
meal at any other nice restaurant, but cooked and eaten bite by bite
brought out an appreciation and a process of eating that was
extraordinarily enjoyable–especially with such great company! Just
when I thought I couldn’t eat another bite, the remains of the meal
were whisked away and replaced with another fondue pot of melted
chocolate with a swirl of chunky peanut butter, fresh skewers, and a
tray of strawberries, pineapple, banana, cheesecake, pound cake,
brownies, and marshmallows rolled in crushed oreos all in delectable
bite size pieces. The strawberries were wonderful, the pineapple was
surprisingly good dipped in chocolate, and while I don’t like
marshmallows, I can attest those were wonderful by the sheer enjoyment
my friend got out of them.
Was the food fantastic? No question, it was delicious from beginning
to end. Was the waiter enjoyable? Definitely, a perfect blend of light
hearted helpfulness and “stay back and let them enjoy their food”. But
the real joy was spending the time with my friend, enjoying
conversation, laughter, good food, and time…time to savor the food,
savor the experience, and savor our friendship and our time together.
Secret Life of Bees
I bought the Secret Life of Bees
based on the strength of Sue Monk Kidd’s more recent book, The Mermaid
Chair, which I found a beautiful and fascinating read. While I did not
have the connection to this book as I did with the Mermaid Chair, the
same rhythmic use of language and poignant, often startling observations
are present, which made it a joy to read. I particularly love
her use of sound:
The door closed. So quiet it amounted to nothing but a snap
of air, and that was the strangeness of it, how a small sound like that
could fall across the whole world (33).
I also could appreciate one of the main themes, that of
making a place to heal when you need it, of giving yourself the space,
and putting yourself in the place that is necessary to recover. It
isn’t always a place that makes sense to everyone around you, but it is
very important.
The world will give you that once in a while, a brief
time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where
somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life (82).
I adored the character of August, she was the
story-teller, the keeper of history, and she understood the importance
of a good story, she says, sounding like an echo of Joseph Campbell:
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here (107).
This theme of the importance of our individual stories
along with the power and strength of a community of women was very
powerful. In an interview in the back of the book, Kidd touches on
stories and women when she responds,
Isak Dinesen, who wrote Out of Africa, once said, “All
sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about
them.” Ever since I first read that line, I’ve carried it with me. When
women bond together in a community in such a way that “sisterhood” is
created, it gives them an accepting and intimate forum to tell their
stories and have them heard and validated by others (back of the book,
This same theme of sisterhood is seen in the Mermaid
Chair. But it is this idea that our stories are lighter, easier to bear
if we can share them, if we can simply be heard and validated–that is
powerful. It reminds me again of the PostSecret blog and why that
phenomenon has grown and grown. These are just snipped secrets, little
glimpses into people’s stories, and yet people find a resonating relief
in being able to be heard. Just as Lily has to learn, we all need to learn, “How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is” (285).
Wonderment…
I was sitting at a picnic with my sister Sarah
last night, she’s due in 5 weeks with a little baby girl. Lucky for me,
Sarah doesn’t mind if I prod and push to get my niece to move around
and it gets more and more amazing the bigger she grows. She was
situated just right against the outside of Sarah’s belly last night and
I could feel all down the smoothness of her back to her little butt
sticking up and two little feet that recoiled up when I pushed on them,
pulling them up to her body. That is sheer beauty, a little life
growing, a body felt through just a thin layer of skin, that is a
wonderment.
Quiet desperation…
A popular passage from Thoreou’s Walden was quoted in a movie I watched tonight, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” the full paragraph of the work takes that further:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is
called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city
you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with
the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious
despair is concealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after
work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things (Ch.1, Para.9).
This
was quoted in response to the question as to why someone would do
something completely outside of the bounds of their normal personality,
would change their life up in some little or big way that seems a shot
out of the dark. In the end, the answer wasn’t anything big, the main
character wasn’t unhappy with his wife, or his children, or even his
life as a whole–he just wanted something more, some bit more of
happiness–he hid it because he was ashamed at wanting more. As if
every human being doesn’t deserve every bit of happiness they can
scrape up. I think that people are creatures of habit, we get into ruts
and just move along as we go, until we don’t even really think about
life, we just move along with the flow. While there is a certain
comfort in that, we run the risk of not really seeing the world around
us, of plodding around instead of taking a twirl in the middle of the
side walk instead of just walking quietly with our eyes to the ground.
There was a man who worked in the apartment where I grew up, he was a
big man, very quiet, in fact, I don’t know if I ever heard him say
anything to anyone. He was the janitor and while we used to say he was
crazy–looking back I can still see him dancing with a broom down the
side walks, light on his feet for such a big man. He would freeze when
he knew some one was looking, and only once they had looked away and
moved on, would he resume his dance. In a dream of him, I would see him
dancing down the middle of a road, people all lined on the streets as
if they were waiting for a parade to go by, and he wouldn’t stop
dancing just because people were looking, he would dance and dance and
dance with the most amazing smile on his face–there would always be
time for play, always time to dance.
So far away…but…
We got DVD family videos from Mongolia this week and sat down to watch them tonight.
My brother has been living in Mongolia for almost four years now, but
somehow it hasn’t felt so real as it does tonight. We’ve had lots of
pictures since he left, pictures of him standing with children in front
of a ger, pictures of him standing in front of a wedding chapel with
his new wife, pictures of him holding my nephew, his first child–but
they seem so static. The very nature of a photograph is to capture one
brief moment forever in film, so what we’ve gotten from my brother is
lots of little moments caught forever frozen. It gave the feeling of
postcards, like he was on a long, extended vacation to Mongolia–posing
with the people around him, but not really being there. Somehow
watching him on the television, laughing and talking, picking up his
baby, putting a ger together with his in-laws, doing a magic trick for
his niece–these were living moments. It was a bittersweet moment to
watch, on one hand I am thrilled that he has made a life for himself,
that he has managed to blend his American-ness with the culture he has
chosen to make a life in. On the other hand, there is a disjointed
feeling watching this man that I remember being born! I remember
changing his diapers, and watching my sister-in-law walk their son on
the floor was so odd because I remember helping Craig learn how to
walk, and ride his bike, and yell at him for going to the bathroom in
the bushes of a neighboring apartment. He’s our Craig and yet he is living an entirely different life where we have no place.
BUT…for all that the languages were different, and the faces were
different, not to mention the idea of moving ones house for the summer
was different–I saw my nephew being mushed on by his mom in the way
that only mom’s can, irregardless of slobber, being kissed as if there
was no tomorrow, I saw him being bounced in the air by his grandpa,
cuddled by his grandma, being sung to with his arms pulled around to a
song that had the feel of the “itsy bitsy spider” type song with his
aunt; I saw my brother sitting and laughing with his wife on the couch
as he amazed his niece with magic tricks, I saw him working with his
family there, putting together a ger, doing things the traditional way
and pulling out the drill to give it some modern stability, and I
realized, yet again, that you can live a world away, speak another
language, eat different foods, live in different houses–and yet we’re
all the same. It’s all about family, we all want our children happy and
well fed, we want a roof (whether shingled or covered in layers of
felt) over our heads, we sing and we laugh together and sometimes cry
together. I’m happy that my brother has extended and blended our
families together, and I’m happy that my nephew has such a loving
support structure around him–I look at all those faces that I’m
starting to know by name and get to now see the movements and voices
and all the things that make them individuals–not just snapshots–and
I have the sense that these are not strangers–these people are family
and there is nothing more important than family.
