Just Breathe...and Notice

Unpacking

So, the writing weekend. Wow.

It was so many things....

I was my typical hand-wringing self the week before leaving.  It's entirely possible that I put more thought into packing my suitcase than I did into my grad-school thesis.  I fretted over how Rich and the kids would manage without me (for THREE WHOLE DAYS!).  I attempted to calculate the statistical probability that my plane would be struck by wayward space junk.

Nothing like a healthy handful of ersatz dilemmas to avoid having to address the real concern. 

Am I right?

Bottom line:  I went up there terrified that I would discover that I was a farce.   That I had no skill.  That I had no right to think I had a story, let alone that anyone would want to hear it.

I was also TOTALLY freaked out about sleeping in a room with 5 strangers.

I flew into an airport that was 2.5 hours away from Kripalu.  I drove North on the Taconic Parkway, a narrow, winding highway that requires a level of attention not demanded from most major roads.  The rain came down sideways, slowing me down and forcing me to be present.

I sang for most of the trip.  Frank Zappa (Jammin' in Joe's garage), Tanita Tikaram (Twistin' in my Soberity), and Joni Mitchell (trust me, two heads really are better than one).  I sang loud and proud.  I sang out my fears and my doubts and my insecurities.

I arrived with a slightly sore throat and a commitment to myself.  I was going to be fearless.

I checked in and dragged myself and my (very well-packed!) luggage to my dorm, where I quickly discovered that I'd arrived too late to get a bottom bunk.

Yes.  There were actual bunk beds.  

I refused to be afraid.  Not of falling off the rickety ladder on my way down from the top bunk; not of the other women coming in and out of our shared room; not of the large crowd of strangers in the dining hall;  not of the 40+ other writers gathered to learn how to tell their stories. 

My tendency is towards inhibition, though only the people who know me the best really understand this about me.  I am often one of the first to speak up and share my thoughts.  I appear confident and poised.   And it's true -- I am confident and poised and willing to speak up.  But if you look closely, you'll see that I'm almost always speaking from the perimeter, rarely the heart, of an experience. I don't surrender to experiences, I think about them -- even as I'm having them.  I dissect them and craft their descriptions.  In part, my inhibition, my lack of full presence and participation, is what makes me a writer.  It's what allows me to observe, and, eventually, describe an experience -- to bring it back to life on paper.  It provides, almost de facto, the sense of perspective one needs when writing about one's own experiences. 

The downside to this de facto perspective is that it's not fully authentic.  Authentic perspective is earned.  Authentic perspective comes from being fully present in an experience and then allowing the experience to take root in your psyche.  Authentic perspective is what happens only AFTER you've allowed yourself to be transformed.  Authentic perspective demands courage.

I knew, intuitively, long before I arrived at Kripalu, that I was going to have to climb inside this experience.  I was going to have to be transformed.  I was going to have to be fearless.

And I was.  I was fearless and I was transformed.

What surprised me most was that I was not transformed by the writing seminar (although the seminar itself was great and I came away with pages and pages of valuable information).  I was not transformed by the time I spent writing or the time I spent in mediation or the time I spent doing yoga. 

I was transformed by having made the choice to be fearless.

I was transformed by living that choice for an entire weekend.  

I was transformed by being fully present.

I was transformed by letting go.

I drove away on Sunday afternoon, on the beautiful back roads of the Berkshire Mountains, and I thought about what I would remember most about the weekend.  It didn't take long for the answer to surface:  I would remember how it felt to be fearless.

Fear.  Fear of not being enough, of not having the right to be where I am -- is what binds me to the perimeter.  Fear is what makes me settle for de facto perspective.  Fear is what keeps me from being authentic.

Fearlessness came easily at Kripalu, surrounded by strangers and enveloped in beauty.  My focus wasn't challenged by the demands of daily life.  There was no laundry to fold or dinner to cook or homework to supervise.  It's easy to see why people want to live there, or at places like it. 

Fearlessness is hard to sustain in the larger world, there's so much noise and so many distractions.

I know it's in there somewhere  -- I have the well-earned perspective to prove it.

I know it's there and I'll continue to reach for it amid the din of daily life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live, from Kripalu.

After a flight time snafu, armrest-grabbing turbulence, torrential rain, and a few construction detours, I made it to Kripalu for my writing seminar. 

I am bunking in a room with 5 other women, sharing a communal bathroom, and sharing intimate writing with total strangers. 

I hyperventilate if I think too much about it, so I've been taking it a moment at a time.  A breath at a time. 

The first writing exercise was to write about moments in your life that were extremely salient, where you were fully present and connected.

Here are mine (the first took place in the elevator of my office building on 9/13/01.  The second is pretty self-explanatory):

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I remember the sound of her cry.  I remember it every bit as well as I remember the sound of my children’s first breaths.

I remember the way her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

I remember the way she smelled.  The way we both smelled, a gut-turning combination of smoke and melted metal and burnt flesh.

I remember each of those 21 floors.  I remember each and every breath as an opportunity to do something. To reach out.  To connect.  To comfort. To be human.

I remember how I failed.  I remember how I stared straight ahead like a good New Yorker. 

I remember how I studied the elevator doors, expecting the image of the gleaming metal to replace the image of the heavily-armed men guarding Grand Central Station.   I remember praying that the whooshing sounds of the moving elevator would replace the keening pleas of the ash-covered searchers.

I remember knowing, deeply knowing, what I could have done.  What I should have done as I stood beside her in that elevator. 

I remember how it felt to fail.   How it felt to forgot my own humanity.  How it felt to step off that elevator, my eyes focused on the ground, as though they were willing my feet to guide me away from my shame.

I remember the countless apologies I have whispered since that September morning.

 

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I have always been the ugly girl. 

Too tall.  Too big.  Small chin.  Big nose.  Flat face.  Goofy eyes.   Crazy hair.

I am the one who trips over your dog or steps on your feet.  I am the one who bumps into you in step class.  I am the one who drops a pile of books in the middle of the quiet library.

I am the one who avoids mirrors and cameras.  I don’t like what I see.  I don’t want to see.

My lament of self-loathing has been a constant companion, for all but one grace-filled and fleeting moment.

If asked, I never would have predicted that such a moment would have taken place in a dressing room in a suburban Massachusetts mall.  If I had been given a prior scripting rights, I would have placed myself on a mountain peak or in a serene yoga class.  At the very least, I would have been wearing something that was not covered in dried spit-up.

But grace is rarely ours to direct and I am thankful for the moments I am blessed to receive it, regardless of the location or the state of my clothes.

I was a new mother, and I was awash in wild hormones and leaky breasts.  My pants didn’t fit.  I wandered through the mall, carrying my son in his sling and my new, bigger, clothes in shopping bags.   I avoided my reflections in the shiny storefronts.

I was in a dressing room when Ean needed to nurse.  It was one of those spacious and well-appointed rooms with a soft seat and a large mirror.  I sat cross-legged; cradled my newborn, my first born, in my lap lifted him to my breast.  I rubbed his head while he nursed.  I leaned over to breathe him in and capture the nepenthe of newborn odor. 

Then I raised my head and I saw myself. 

I saw beauty.  I looked at myself and saw beauty.

At that moment, my body was not too big or too awkward or too polluted with shame.  My body was strong and capable.  My body could create and nourish life.  My body brought love into the world.

At that moment, my face was not a collection of mis-matched features.  My face was a work of art, an expression of the limitless love that passes from mother to child.

At that moment, I was the beautiful girl.

There's soap on my brain.

This is one of those stories I'll have to delete from the blogosphere someday -- hopefully before Ean gets old enough to stumble across it and wonder why I felt compelled to share the breadth and depth of his dingbattery with all the people inside my computer.

God bless his spacey little heart.

He's a bright boy.  Really.  He's a brilliant writer, freakishly observant,  and has an uncanny ability to see things in unique and innovative ways.

Sometimes though.....sometimes he can't figure out how to take a shower.

It started as an off morning.  We overslept -- not my much, but if you know Ean, you know he likes his routines.  His routine is to wake up at 5:30 a.m. (not a typo!!) to get ready for school.  He does this so he has time in the morning to read or play some Wii.  This morning, after staying up late to finish math homework, he didn't get up until 6:15.

He scowled through breakfast, then stomped into his room and got dressed.

Then I reminded him that he had not taken a shower the night before. I gave him the option of taking a shower then, or waiting until after school. 

He slumped to the floor , looking like I'd just informed him that the dog died.

More scowling and stomping, but he made his way into the bathroom.  I heard the shower go on and, for a few hopeful minutes,  I thought we were in the clear.

"MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I *run* to the bathroom and throw back the shower curtain, prepared for large pools of blood or a, at the very least, a missing limb.

"I have SOAP in my eyes"

Are you fucking kidding me?

"So, um, rinse them?."

"I can't.  HELP MEEEE!!"

"What do you mean you CAN'T?!?"

"I can't. My hands have soap on them"

"SO RINSE YOUR HANDS!!!"

"Oh"

At this point he tries to GET OUT OF THE SHOWER!

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Going to rinse my hands.   You told me to rinse my hands"

God bless him.  He was headed for the freaking sink.

"In the SHOWER.  Rinse your hands IN THE GODDAMN SHOWER!"

"Oh.  But I can't open my eyes to see where the water is"

"Give.  Me.  Your. Hands."

I rinse off his hands FOR HIM and tell him to splash water on his eyes.  I walk out of the bathroom, planning to ask Rich if he's SURE he never dropped the baby on his head.

"MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  HELP MEEEEEE!!!"

I go BACK into the bathroom to find him naked, dripping wet, and standing on his (fresh! clean!) school clothes.  Eyes squeezed shut, shampoo suds oozing from his hair.

"I need a towel"

"Open your eyes and GET BACK IN THE SHOWER!"

"But I'm already clean."

"GET.  BACK. IN. THE SHOWER."

At this point I'm a raving lunatic and ranting about how he's NINE FREAKING YEARS OLD and should know how to TAKE A DAMN SHOWER!!  I rinse his hair for him, hand him a towel and storm out of the bathroom.

He emerges a few minutes later, wearing damp clothes.  His shirt is inside out.  He's crying and apologizing. I felt like I was one-step away from being a full-on child abuser. 

We hug, apologize, and chalk it up to a bad morning for both of us.

I walk in the door after getting everyone dropped off at school.  The phone is ringing.

"Mom.  I forgot my lunch box"

Finally!

New blog is up!

http://justbreath.typepad.com/an_extraordinary_ordinary/