At 16, We Exhale

Sixteen came and went. None of the usual fanfare, no car with a large bow parked in the drive, no huge surprise party BBQ designed to usher my sweet boy across the threshold of not-driving to driving. He can't technically drive yet, so maybe that's why this celebration felt muted and less elated than others. Maybe that celebration is one still to come.

But fifteen had been a year of holding breath. It started a few months before his birthday, his long lean frame and easy smile at times a startling reminder of Hunter, basketball held loosely under his arm at his side, his easy wave in the summer sunlight sending me right back to the day I last saw my brother in the rearview mirror on my way out of town. Fifteen was a year of a tension that sat at the back of my skull, low where the head meets the neck, an alertness of danger. Danger might come in the form of worry about how D was doing at school, whether he was happy or connected to friends and family, how he was feeling in this world of what feels like constant tension and would extend to a broader worry about the world and his place in it. This was all my tension, not his. "What if something happens to him?" my mind would ask as inopportune times of watching he and his friends play ball or when he'd walk away from the car in the morning. I'd find myself in frequent tears. I knew that my flood of emotions was unusual. It seemed at one point completely irrational and at another completely normal. There were a few times it bordered on a panic attack. Gratefully, I have good friends whose wisdom led me through those scared moments.

My therapist and I have talked a lot about the long ripple of trauma in life. When she first mentioned that losing my brother constituted trauma, I pushed back hard, "People have had horrible things happen to them, Darleen. This is life, this just happens." But she kept with it, explaining how trauma works, how my defining other people's trauma as "Big T" and mine as "Little t" was fine, but it was still trauma that required me to work through, process and come to a place of understanding the loss. I was reminded of Viktor Frankl's idea that pain has the property of gas let into a vessel, that no matter the amount of gas, it will fill the entire vessel. Trauma has these properties, it seems, and can linger longer than anyone ever realizes. You can work through it, you can observe it when it comes up and see it for what it is and, depending on where you are in your work, you can work on not allowing it to bring fear and anxiety into your every day that limits your living. In my case it was subtle and then it wasn't. My love and deepest respect to people who fight this every day.

This morning I was listening to an NPR piece on survivors of gun violence and the things that pop up in their lives. One woman interviewed noted that when her daughter contracted a disease she had to work through deep feelings of fear of losing her. That provoked this little blog post. One person's story sometimes reaches out to another to make them feel less alone.

There are a million complexities to losing a sibling, the shift of parent and child relationships, the ongoing loss felt in sibling relationships, the episodic and startlingly real feelings of recurrence and remembrance that startle the living and drive intense emotions. All during that 15th year, I would talk to David about those feelings, not so much to let him know that I was terrified something would happen to him (which I did, honestly, because I was) but because he has a gift for seeing the patterns and behaviors that exist around him. I wanted him to understand what was happening. And, in truth, he will know and love many people in his life who live with lingering trauma. We all do. We all need to know.

On the morning of his 16th birthday, I asked David what it felt like to be finally 16. "Pretty much the same," he said. And, after we'd been driving for a bit, he turned and asked me what it felt like for me. "It feels like exhaling, buddy. It feels like everything is going to be ok."

And it will be.
It will be.
Come what may.

(Happiest 16th to my beautiful son. 7/8)
/The book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vanderkolk has been a real gift./

Rechercher - and the pink

This piece was originally written in 2014, only to be found while poking around in my drafts folder for something else. The week I’m painting my lawn furniture pink. TY, Universe, for the reminder.
*********

I sit at the border of the practical and the whimsical, cross-legged on the ground of practical and peering ever so gingerly over to the other side. This comes from a lifetime of thinking about practical things, having been raised by a mother who made practicality a hobby. This seeps into everything; choices from clothing to cars, where to vacation, where to live, what I purchase. I'm whimsical with things I do for others, but never with myself and often not with my children.

It's dry and parched sometimes on this side of the line, constraining and desolate.

I haven't always been this way. I was the kid who was obsessed with rainbows and horses and designing things, the kid who had ideas about things that were outrageous and certainly not practical. When I let her, that kid sits at the computer with her daughter and sides with the eight year old wants the tie dye beanbags instead of the more practical neutral cotton ones. That kid pokes the adult me in the ribs when I shy away from pink. That kid whispers in my ear "she's only eight once, let her heart be free" as she moves the cursor and clicks "complete order" on two wildly colored monstrosities that will take up half of her room. I can see here there, listening to music, hanging out with friends, basking in a space that has her personal mark on it. It's saying "yes" more than saying "no". It's actually saying "why the fuck not?" instead of "I shouldn't".

"Yes" over "no". Processing the "no" and why the "no" is always the first response. Meditating on joy over practicality. Realizing that this hemmed in way of thinking and being has kept me at about 20% of my creative capacity.

In early June, I bought three scrubby little aloe plants on a whim while shopping at IKEA. Mostly because I liked the pots next to them. Mostly because I thought I needed a little color for my window sill. Maybe because aloe plants reminded me of breaking off the spiky, green arms to rub over cuts and scrapes as a child, the plant's healing power working magic in the hot Oklahoma summertime. Weeks later, I broke the black plastic pots away from the plants' soil-encrusted roots to find what seemed like miles and miles of roots wrapped around the base. The scrubbiness of the plants completely due to the constraint of what was going on beneath in the constricted and root bound weave below. I moved my fingers back and forth, loosening the roots, breaking them so they could regenerate and grow, packing around them nutritious soil with room to breathe. Feed the root, the plant will flourish. Sometimes things have to be broken in order to be rebuilt again anew.

To break, to bend.

It starts with a text to a dear friend, that nattering anxiety and worry you’ve been wrapped in all week, this week, the week of holidays and loneliness and estrangement tipping off a rush of worry about people you love. It’s a simple, frustrated text that he quickly intuits where you are. “I’m going to leave the door open and put a bottle of wine on the coffee table. Curl up on the couch and I’ll be down to talk in 20.” And moments like these are the test, you who are embarrassed by your neediness, not wanting to be a burden, not really wanting to admit that you need some love and a good talk and just a moment. But you go, because that act in and of itself is a bravery, and on the way out the door you grab the wishbone that has been sitting on your windowsill. “A wish in wait” you call them, ready for times like these.

Fast forward to a crisp, chilly afternoon with an azure sky and a smoking fire pit. You are sitting outside with another dear friend, glass of champagne in hand, escaping what can only be described as the smelliest fish dish in the world. You have been invited to her family’s small gathering, her welcoming heart opening another spot for you. It’s a timid acceptance of the invitation that leaves you wondering why you keep doing this, the resisting, when there are people to love and friendship and sisterhood with people who know your spirit.

Smelly fish and blue skies turn into singing “Proud Mary” and “Easy” and drinking cheap wine at karaoke with new, lovely, gorgeous friends and their friends whom you’ve never met, the invitation that was the hardest to say yes to (sober-ish karaoke at 7:30p? Um, ok...), but the greatest yes because this friend knows the struggle of finding a place in a city of odd circles and she’s very intentionally trying to make that change for you. And this is an act of caring that you haven’t felt in a really long time, not because it’s not ever been done, but because you’ve been so reluctant to accept it.

In truth, we are at our best and worst sometimes in these moments of acceptance, the urge to mask our own needs by wanting to be helper but not the one in need. The feelings that sit under that discomfort—embarrassment, shame, humiliation, abandonment, rejection, loneliness, loss, hurt, worth— are real and deep, their roots are so firmly planted that unearthing them feels like the ground underneath would give way. Some of us, most of us, are pack animals. We need our people, a place to feel protected and be productive, a group in which to make and sustain a life. And in creating that belonging for others, you have to accept it for yourself.

You sit on the couch looking into your friend’s eyes, having explained the simple rule of the wishbone (as you play it): each person makes a wish for the other and pulls on behalf of that wish coming true. “One-two-three...” and the snap comes away with your friend holding the winning piece. “Oh, good!” he smiles, “that’s going to be a good one.”

And you know you can’t ask because it won’t come true.

And you know that every good thing that happens to you in the future will be sweetened by wondering if this is the grace he gave you in that wish.

And you are so grateful.

This is the Sea

Crouched on the dusty floor of my new studio, light streaming through the huge casement windows, I took a deep breath and lifted the first plastic lid off the first randomly selected box. I'd brought all of the archives into this new space, the boxes and bins of my college and high school history kept for years at my childhood home, my compulsion to keep scraps of notes and cards and pictures and random fragments of my life come to roost in a city so very far away from the ones where I was from. I'd decided that it was finally time to sort and parse, to try to make sense and to try to remember and to be in what was my history at that time as I had recorded it through pieces.

The first piece of paper held my best friend's signature scrawl, the words of a song that sang in our souls at the time, nailing me between the eyes.

Damnit. 

I walked over and dialed up the Waterboys This is the Sea on my iphone and let the music wash over me.

These things you keep
You'd better throw them away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

One verse in and the irony of standing in the middle of this excavation hit me.

Now if you're feelin' weary
If you've been alone too long
Maybe you've been suffering from
A few too many
Plans that have gone wrong
And you're trying to remember
How fine your life used to be
Running around banging your drum
Like it's 1973
Well that was the river
This is the sea!
Wooo!

Verse two and I couldn't read the page for my tears.

Now you say you've got trouble
You say you've got pain
You say've got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust
Nothing but chains
You're scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea yeah!

Three and my heart broke open.

Because that's really what this excavating was about, the finding, the sensemaking, the retracing steps and remembering who, what and why. Recounting, recontexualizing, renaming what has been lost and forgotten and erased and left behind over the countless miles. The who I had been back then made me the woman I am today.  

Two inches down and I found an envelope containing melted coins from my brother Hunter's car wreck.

Another layer and I found a cache of old love notes.

Another brought a rough letter from my mom.

Another offered hilarious cards from friends sent in the days before texting and email and iphones.

Hot, tired from the sorting and feeling, I was about to close everything up when I looked over to see that unmistakable handwriting once again, this time written across the entire swath of the envelope headed with PLEASE READ THIS.

oof.

My heart went zooming back to 1990, standing in my summer sublet, staring at this envelope from my clever-as-hell best friend. Months earlier, we had a bitter break, one so deep and severe that it felt it would be impossible to overcome. I refused her calls and wrote Return to Sender on every card even as they continued to show up. I was hurt and that hurt felt so huge that I had to throw gasoline on it, light it up and take it all down, even if it meant losing the most important person in my life. 

But she kept at it until one day this letter showed up with her message on the outside, her knowing damn well that I would be powerless not to read it, the message explaining that she refused to give up, that she was standing for me and for our friendship. That she wasn't going anywhere, for life. 

It also taught me a lot about myself: that friendship and loyalty are not light things for me, that maybe I expect too much or don't communicate clearly enough, that sometimes my favorite flamethrower is on deck with trigger finger poised. But also that I am there to extend the olive branch to work it out, show up, be there willing just as she was for me. 

I have never forgotten that act of love, just as I have never forgotten her patience and willingness to put herself out there again and again to rescue something that, decades later, is deeply precious to us both. That day, and the miles with her before and after, taught me about trust, what is earned, what friendship means, about not giving up. That people stay. 

These things you keep. Eternally grateful. Love you, sister.

Where has it gone?

Today I gasped a little bit when I loaded up this space to see that I have not written here in nearly a year, provoked to write by a memory I had of my brother and stuckness and disentangling.

Nearly a year.

Time is short in this moment, but I'm coming back if only to close this door and bless it in gratitude and let it be.

Amen.

Into the Waves

White Water was a huge water park in Oklahoma City, a place where legions of children, dressed in all manner of swim and floating gear, and adults, tugging large coolers of processed food and Capri Sun, would convene to escape the boiling summer heat. Our family would make the 40 mile trek to OKC to spend hours running wild, season passes clutched in hand, so exhausted by the end of the day that my mother would have the sweet relief of a carful of sleeping children on the ride home.

White Water had all of the features of a regular water park: the lazy river, the stories-high White Lightening slide, the kiosks where you could get sizzling hot french fries that rested salty against your chlorine-soaked tongue. But the strangest and sometimes most wonderful part of the park was the wave pool. It was enormous, hundreds of people packed into it's football-field like expanse just waiting, waiting. Suddenly the bell would ring, a scream would erupt from the crowd and the water would start moving, great undulations of waves roiling from deep within its man-made ocean.

I've been thinking about the wave pool lately as it applies to life, this wave pool in particular because unlike the ocean, there was a certain rhythm to the waves. You could sit atop of your raft and ride, or stand closer to shore and slam your body, back turned, against them. And there was that middle ground where you weren't quite tall enough to touch the bottom without the waves washing over your head. This was the thrilling, sometimes terrifying space, that space in between feeling solid and feeling the rush of danger. And, depending on the day, depending on how crowded the wave pool was, depending on the strength of your skinny legs to buoy you up, you sat on the edge of being plowed under or keeping your head above water. The rhythm of the waves had not changed, neither had your expectation of them being there, but the circumstances and your place in them became the variables of remaining above or being sucked below.

I've held this metaphor in my mind a lot lately, as friends have struggled with some pretty deep loss and sadness over the past year, as I myself negotiate my own place in the world, as we as a community lean in to lift one another up when we aren't feeling so strong. I think sometimes it's awkward to ask for help, that metaphor of being in a situation where you know that the waves are coming, but you just don't have the strength in the moment to kick yourself above them, or where how hard and disorienting it may be when everyone else seems to sit atop the water on their own raft while you can barely keep your head clearing the water's roiling plane. And, to extend the metaphor, the folks sitting atop the rafts likely don't even know you are struggling, because their gaze is shifted outwards toward the horizon, their perspective raised above what is happening below. But there is room on the raft for two, maybe three even. I know this, and I know the hospitality of that space if I just ask. Why is it sometimes so hard to do so?

I want to keep working with the raft metaphor, or to talk about the strength of pushing off of the bottom and riding the wave, that powerful feeling of not so much the wave striking your body, but the ride of catching it as it comes and not being swept under by it. To push up and engage, the timing of it coming and you being ready, the sheer thrill of knowing that something can drag you under but using your energy, your life force, to meet it and unify, to roll into it and wait for the next one.

Because the truth is that the waves stop until they start again, and they do start again because life is not static and change happens and shit happens and hard things happen all the time. But the key is this: you are not alone in the pool, although you feel that you may be, and your position in the pool is based on your own negotiation. That's the thing I need to remember most. I choose how I work with the waves.

what lessons you prepare for us

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

-Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter

Today is the final day of my three week fall observance, something I jokingly call Lent in September, an extension of my spring observance left over from my catholic youth. Fall is a rich time for digging in for me, the turning and change of the season providing a beautiful backdrop to explore.

Every year something big comes up, usually something overwhelming and huge that encases my thoughts for the entire journey. Last year it was finally mourning my dad after 27 years of not, that space larger and more profound with ripples I could never have anticipated. Lent in September stays with me long, long after it's over.

So I walked into this year with an open heart, wondering where it would go, only to be met pretty much on the first day with the loss of a friend. Not your typical loss of a irreconcilable fight or death or some ripping apart, but the void of just. total. absence. This, a new friend who I'd gotten to know over six weeks of deep sharing and connecting, a creative force in my life in a very short time, someone who I felt a kinship with and an affinity for, a deep channel, twinned in perspective and vibe. It was a deep dive of friendship and then they were gone, vanished, nonresponsive, lost.

I have lived my life with a lot of loss, people removed from my life quickly through all of the regular passages of sudden death and arguments and betrayal, sometimes buried by my inability to get past feeling hurt enough to extend the olive branch and mend things, sometimes my own clumsy failure to apologize for things I acknowledge I have done. It's a dance of getting past your own ego, understanding the perspective of the other person, being clear about what you want out of the situation (mending things? having your say? turning the knife?), humbling yourself to be vulnerable to offering and receiving apology.

Loss that has no closure is totally different. It feels like that feeling of walking into school in fifth grade and not knowing if you will have friends that day, it's the first time the person you feel for handled the leaving poorly, it's the emotional unavailablity of key relationships in your life. Because it's ambiguous and undefined, it's all of the things.

For me, it calls into question everything about how I operate in the world. I've had conversations with good friends about whether or not I provide unearned access to people and what that means, or with others, whether that unearned access is actually one of the most important, vital and beautiful parts of my being. One friend said "I'd hate to see you close this part of yourself down, Fran. It's what makes you who you are." And, they are right.

So this time has been about walking around in the space of grief, with a perspective, for the first time, through all of the loss in my life. It's being able to observe the grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and my experience of weaving in and out of each. I feel like I am watching myself work this from 30,000ft while being deep in it at the same time and it is simultaneously painful and fascinating. Painful because even though you may intellectually know what is happening, it doesn't take the energy out of the emotional feelings. Fascinating because we are soft creatures, we love, love is important and fear is strong, hurt is real, being gentle with ourselves sometimes sits in the smallest places.

At times, I think I'm insane to be this bothered by something that was short term, possibly not legit, a hoodwinking, being had. How could I have just spent three weeks thinking about a friendship that didn't exist for much longer than that same period of time. But these experiences come up in life for us to feel and learn, growing in our own awareness of ourselves and how we are in relation to others, so love ourselves more as feeling and loving beings, to understand our porous boundaries. We are put on this earth to love one another, so in that what is safety? I am still trying to figure out how to simultaneously keep my heart open and myself in check, how to share myself with others when the connection is there and understand that even in the possibility of pain, it's what I am meant to be. Love over fear, every time.