Rodney Bay

Last month, in my mother's house in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, I found myself taking note of everything, mentally recording the objects I grew up with, photographs I was so familiar with I barely saw them, stacked lovingly on every surface, in every room, amid artifacts gathered over the course of a life. This is the house where my parents were last together and where my father died. This is the house where my children spent every August with their grandmother until my son went to college, where the beach is steps down the road, and the salty sea air kisses you awake each morning, and lulls you to sleep at night. There are memories in every corner of this house, the best. The best.

The Orchid House

When we were with my mom in St. Lucia recently, she took us to the Orchid House, a wing of the Ministry of Agriculture where orchids of all sorts are raised for sale and export. My daughter didn't leave her grandmother's side, and my mom seemed to happy to be there with us all, her child and grandchild, devoted neighbors and Stella, her housekeeper for decades, who more than anyone made her life in St. Lucia possible. My brother is there this week for a medical conference. At the end of it, he will take my mother with him back to Jamaica. I spoke to my mom this morning and she was packing. She said, "It's so hard to pack this time, because I don't know if I will ever come back to St. Lucia." We had all had that thought, but she was the first one to say it. "We'll all come back together," I told her, and I realized that I knew it was true.

Marathoner

I have been having a hard time writing here, because when I wrote in upset recently, it had unexpected reverberations, my children were left reeling, even though they thought they were fine at the time. And even when I was over the storm, having been able to write it out, to ride it out that way, well, for my family the storm was just starting, and I was the cause, an unwitting weathervane, swinging wild. I learned I have to be more careful in what I write here, and I took down some posts. And yet I want to continue writing here, that way lies sanity, so it is a precarious dance, and I am trying to find the steps, to find my way back as our family heals from crashing unspoken fears, as we find our way to forgiveness and understanding and acceptance of what is, and who is. We are all still a little bruised. But we are finding our way through.

It's just that I have no tolerance at all for anything unresolved. I want it all better right now. But I have to let it evolve. I have to trust our history. If we were all together in the same place, it would be easier. We would be laughing and being silly by now. It's like the Mark Twain quote Elizabeth posted today: Humor is tragedy plus time. If we could look into each other's faces, we'd get to the humor that much sooner.

In the meantime, my husband has been cooking for me again. It is such a sweetness to come home and see him moving about the kitchen, creating a simple summer meal for us. Grilled tuna steaks with avocado and cherry tomato salad, prepared with love. Calling me for the supermarket to ask what I'm feeling like this evening. He doesn't say much when it comes to any turbulence of emotion. He's not one to unspool the knotted thread of what he might be feeling. Look up stoic in the dictionary and you'll find the man I married. And if you come at him in anger, he will batten down the hatches like no one's home. But if he feels safe, he will come out of that cave and love you through his actions. Then you see the man who is at heart a patient marathoner, uncomplaining, and oh so loved.


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I just like the picture

A good night by the river

 

Falling Water

Yesterday I called the therapist I last went to seven years ago. My son was in eighth grade then, and now he is finished his sophomore year of college. She heard something in my voice and she fit me in, and recommended a double session, which turned out to be exactly what I needed. As I talked the tears and fears just overflowed. I felt like a person who had been parched with the deepest thirst who found a cold, fresh waterfall and I stood under that falling water and sent all my cares swirling away. Nothing seemed so scary afterward. Everything just was. I had so many pieces of the puzzle but didn't know to put them together. She helped me see the picture whole. She helped me get past my own locked-in place so that I could find the room called compassion. Understanding. Forgiveness. Love. She helped me drink deep from the fresh cold water. I'm not so thirsty anymore. I plan to go back, to keep going back. For a while anyway. This is a whole new stage of life. And in a weird way, everyone dances around me, as I dance around them, and if one of us is out of sorts, then everyone is suddenly out of sorts. If I am in balance, my husband and children and even my mother will have an easier time finding their own balance. So, with the old people declining and the children off pursuing their lives, and my husband and me figuring out how to do this new stage of our lives together, I called my old therapist. And it was good.

Guests in My House

 

          The Guest House

           This being human is a guest house

           Every morning a new arrival.

           A joy, a depression, a meanness,

           some momentary awareness comes

           as an unexpected visitor.

           Welcome and entertain them all. 

           Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

           who violently sweep your house

           empty of its furniture,

           still treat each guest honorably.

           He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

           The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

           meet them at the door laughing,

           and invite them in. 

           Be grateful for whoever comes,

           because each has been sent

           as a guide from beyond.


           —Rumi

Homesick

This being my fourth summer of blogging, I am starting to understand that I get depressed in the summer. My children leave for whatever wonderful endeavor we have facilitated for them, and my husband and I are alone, trying to remember what we used to do before all the years of facilitating everything for our children. He is still somewhat in his cave, processing something, or avoiding processing something, I don't know, and his back hurts, all of which makes me think he is depressed, too. He says he is not, but I don't think he knows quite what he is feeling. He is trying to feel nothing, I think.

I handled summer better, all the bright sunshine mocking you, when I worked from home two days a week. I would talk on the phone, have lunch with a friend, sit in the park, run an errand, see a mid-morning movie, stake a claim to the day. I would wake up slow and have leisurely coffee, and reconnect with myself.

Now I wake up hard, fighting from the moment I open my eyes with the desire to stay home, knowing I have to get up and get dressed and go to the magazine, where I will lose myself in work and stay until evening, eventually finding my way home when night is falling, and then I find myself still awake way past midnight, just so I can feel as if I had a portion of the day that was mine to do with as I wished.

I handled summer better, too, when my elders were stronger, when my body was more limber, when my husband and I would plan excursions, when there were island homes we could visit and be carefree, when there was no scaffolding around our apartment building blocking out the sky, cutting off the benches on which I used to sit and read a book under the trees, and chat with my neighbors and feel like I was part of a community. Now I live in a construction site, the brick outer walls of our complex undergoing repointing for the past three years, with no end in sight. I feel so alone in New York sometimes. Everyone works too hard and too long and the essential thing, our human connection, withers away for lack of being tended.

I am always tempted not to write on this blog in the summer. I ruminate too much, veer toward melancholy. I  am starting to see the pattern, and to assign reasons. But maybe it's all just chemistry in the end.




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Farm Outing

Oh, alright, Mark. You want words. This is my daughter when she was 5, at her very first farm outing in kindergarten. She was utterly and completely in her element. She went to an elementary school that had a farm. I wrote about it here. Leaving the farm behind was, for every member of her unusually close-knit class, the very hardest part of making the transition to high school. They miss that place still. So do their parents. Maybe I put up this picture because, like that class when they had to move on from the farm, I am trying to make the transition that is looming before me. That class, including my daughter, will apply to college in the fall.

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Grateful

The simple grace that surrounds me, it is stunning. Though it was therapeutic to put feelings into words, I felt so exposed after writing that post on Saturday, I finally took it down, but your deeply generous comments, your thoughtful emails, were such support. And this morning, I received this text from my son:

"Hey mommy I love you! Remember you can always vent to me. I may be stubborn like pops but I'm also part of you. And don't worry your blog didn't worry me. I know you would never leave us."

Mommy. I feel humbled and newly awake. Fragile as a newborn. I can't quite explain.


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