anthems for the ordinary life
I have learned if you participate in your life you will see you are not so distant from hope, and eventually there will be roses, and clapping, and imagination, and the world is happening again. Did you know that? It is equal parts magic and work.
Walking the boarded path to the beach, my eyes pause on red berries as she says, “Mommy, let’s look for seashells.” We left the thin snow back home behind and now I am walking up and down the sand collecting pink sea glass and wonder, feeling foam on my fingers in the company of my dear star.
The sun on the water is tangerine flow and life glitters even though I never meant to land in this moment; it wasn’t what I imagined for myself, these ordinary days. But here it is, a sparkle of freedom and safety I would never trade: wet kisses and the sound of saltwater taking me to heaven.
Pay attention.
“Princess Luna lifts the moon to the sky in Ponyville,” she tells me as we snuggle into her bed and I listen for what stardust she will speak tonight. “Her sister is Celestia and she’s saved by the Elements of Harmony.”
Each word is shot through the sky like a crystal streamer–one surprise after another exploding into prisms of delight, though I have no idea what any of it means.
“Princess Luna lifts the moon to the sky in Ponyville. Who lifts the moon to the sky where we live?”
I answer her with kisses.
It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.
He folds his t-shirts with exceptional care, removes the burners on the stovetop to scrub underneath, and his quiet routines comfort me in a way that feels too sacred to speak. His ritual the folding, mine the thanks I offer up from the next room for his existence, for the simple ways he recommits to the world.
When we took our first family trip a year after our daughter was born, the whole thing lasted 36-hours because she wasn’t used to sleeping away from home and so didn’t. After a full night of attempting sleep, we finally gave in around 5:00 am and wandered the beach as the sun came up.
Our daughter crawled on the sand and splashed her hands in the twinkling lake like tiny wings. There was an abandoned basketball next to the beach chairs and she rolled it across the sand with wonder–such a simple participation–and we were safe together, breathing on that beach with joy. He and I were so tired but so happy and I wanted to trace in the sand a promise to passerby: You get to have another life.
We spent the whole day outside playing until whispers of a sunset appeared, and then we began the drive home, eager to get to our own beds. We stayed quiet until the sky turned black, and when our daughter finally passed out in the backseat, my husband’s hand said to mine in the dark of the car, Come here, let me hold you; I promise some things won’t break, while our headlights formed a tiny glow beneath a galaxy of stars.
Or this.
Or this.
You get to begin again and this could be the moment.
“My grandpa loved this song,” he says anytime a rendition of ‘What a Wonderful World’ plays. I have heard him say it so many times that I hear the words even in his absence whenever the song comes on. All previous associations have been replaced; he has rewritten this corner of my life.
I could choose to remind him he has told me this before, or dismiss his memory by remarking that it’s a song loved by many. But the reliability of his delivery feels warm and safe, a candle on a winter night. These familiar words are among the pieces that have built my home, their certainty a promise between us, and so I choose to love them instead.
All transformation begins somewhere. I piled one hundred new choices on top of one another. As I walked forward, dust began to fall. For a long time I felt nothing. Then one day I could feel my arms in the sleeves of my shirt, the whites of my eyes looked clear again, and the single pink flower I’d planted near the driveway began to bloom.
Triumph comes from the tedious steps.
Let’s lay together and fall asleep like we’re mermaids. Her curls lace across the pillow like pearl-colored coral. My feet spill over the end of the twin bed her Papa built due to the thick wall of stuffed animals she has constructed behind our heads. Pink octopus, blue whale, white unicorn, a frog. The words hit me like an ocean wave, sudden and electric, bursting something open within me like a vague memory from another life. We are overlapping limbs and starlight whispers. Maybe I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.
Just another bedtime being pulled into the tides of sleep together, lucky and wholehearted, dreams of aqua and lime, the air above us twinkling with giggles and hope.
Maybe I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.
The morning of the day we put our dog to sleep I could hear the river barges in the distance. 24-hours before, my husband shook me awake whispering that we needed to move up the arrangements. He’d woken up to blood on the wood floor and it was more than the other times.
One minute you are safe in the hazy space of dreams and the next it is a black morning and someone you love is holding your hand speaking dead words with eyes of pain. That transition will freeze in time, an iced-over corner of your heart, the moment a heavy angel sat on your shoulder and instructed, “Here is the entrance to the tunnel you must walk through. I cannot tell you how long until you reach the other side.”
We should have realized she was sick before we did. Her muscle turned to bone like a swift and cruel magic trick, and he and I both saw it and wouldn’t see it. When your familiar begins to fade before your eyes, when you reach that place where the earth falls off, the autopilot of normal days is more alluring than before. You look over your shoulder, out the window; how long can you keep singing this abandoned song? It is no easy task to admit every road in front of you is on fire.
We made arrangements for a vet to come to our house for the ending. That morning stretched on like a black ocean and we held each other, hooks in our throats and eyelashes shining with tears. What lasts longer than those final moments before the world falls in on you? The end is underwater limbs and pain you can’t pronounce.
When it was finished we carried her down the front steps of our home and what matters is this: It was such a privilege to lift her heavy body.
And then we were left to an afternoon of one less loved one.
When we brought our daughter home after she was born our dog greeted her as if they’d met before. The baby slept in our room those early days, the dog did too, and we rarely left those four walls, watching sunshine shift to lamplight, safe in our cocoon.
In those days I thought only of beginnings, and life stretched out before us, a long runway of years and simple Saturdays we took for granted. Anyone will tell you life isn’t all marching bands dancing in formations of kites and constellations, and you can’t make a kiss last forever. I thought nothing of it in those gauzy moments; I believed we were untouchable behind our invincible shield of love.
It was wonderful to have believed it.
Maybe you too have met a soul that echoed yours.
We twirl in the sunlit pool, our arms and legs wrapped around each other, her goggled face smiling up at me. 16-year-old lifeguards dot the pool perimeter in red. A bearded man with hair down to his waist (it’s glorious!) swan dives elegantly off the diving board and we are amazed.
A pop song plays from overhead speakers and her pink swimsuit shines neon beneath the chlorinated water. We are splashed by nearby siblings who are climbing one another’s backs or trying to drown each other. Someone has just ordered two hot dogs at the snack bar (summer time!) and the sun sits at its 3:00 pm peak.
Today, the South Saint Paul community pool is the happiest place on earth, a cheap $5 entry and bodies of all sizes out to play. Her smile and mine won’t be stopped; they are big and unapologetic geeky grins we couldn’t hide if we wanted. Our hearts shout: “Come join the party! The pool is crowded but no bother,” both of us swimming in our own circle of light.
Ten years from now, when she has lost the geeky grin and goggles, when the sun is in a season of sleep and her shadows begin to form as they do on us all, will I let that moment be beautiful, too? There must come a point when we expect what is in front of us to be different than it is. When do we forget how to talk to our children?
In the pool, we have spun the wildly simple into magic. It’s just hot dogs and pop songs and strangers splashing by, but we are alive in a cocoon of joy, wet and holy. And a bunch of holy moments placed on top of each other, isn’t that all that’s needed to make a holy life?
We have spun the wildly simple into magic.
Snow hits my windshield in piles and quickly melts to a watery glimmer, mixing with sun to make rainbows. The blue blaze of February sky sparkles like a champagne toast declaring winter has an end and you are near it. Yasmin Williams plays on Spotify through my car stereo, buoyant fingerstyle guitar mixed with kalimba and percussive taps. It’s what I listen to when I feel peace and my life is a castle in the air.
I’m replying to his good morning text, a ritual exchange that is reliable and sweet as he is, one of 10,000 daily acts of love from my husband, each so small you might overlook it if your eye isn’t trained to spot love in its true form. Did you know how simple devotion can feel? It’s like a tiny gumdrop you can hold in your hand.
Rubbing her cheek and hair, back and forth, as she falls asleep, I do my best to put all the love into the touch that I feel when she says “Mama.”
I’ve tried to tell her how that word from her mouth brings me home to my life, but the feeling doesn’t translate to words. I cannot fit the proper number of ‘I love you’s’ in a day, or explain this glowing heart, and so I rub her cheek, I rub her hair–as magical to me as fairy dust, a common miracle. To fall so short with something that matters so much is a beautiful injustice, so cracked and unfair, but the privilege of my life.
Do I love each day enough? Probably not. Definitely not. But this moment, with her, I am close to loving it as well as I can. I whisper into the air filled with lamplight and lullaby, “Thank you.”
Tomorrow the sun will rise and she will say it again: “Mama.” Breaking my heart into one-thousand golden, grateful pieces.
this glowing heart
this glowing heart
That lingering raindrops can so elegantly line the thin branches of the tree outside my window on this black November morning, like careful pearls each waiting for their turn to quietly fall, while I sit with such a full-body-sadness–nearly afraid to move–wondering if there is a way out of the shadow that’s become my life now that the dark memories are slowly filtering in after years of not remembering; that these two realities can co-exist, such beauty next to such grief, these pearls and that sorrow, this is how I know I’m alive, fully alive, on this cruel and glorious day, in this dense and rainy world.
I understand. There is pain, there are monsters inside, that feel far too big to come out. It builds inside like a tornado that could swallow you whole if released. Your body is sitting on top of a train barreling down the tracks–such force of movement–and to let go elicits panic and screams. If it were to come out, where could you put it? It’s too strong and chaotic for anyone to hold. Releasing would only destroy them, too.
But I promise. There is a way.
Usually, it begins by speaking. Who can you find to give the words, “I need help.” They can be the smallest whisper. There is someone in your life who can hear those words, and they will soften towards you, while sitting tall at attention. They will hold a piece of it.
After you have said it once you can look for other places to put these words. You will find people are willing to hear them. It may not be the ones you thought, and that’s okay. But speak it into community and allow those warm waters to hold you. With every whisper, a small piece of it will fizz out of your body. Allow.
Before there were dark nights of icy fear, and that feeling will likely pass through you again. It was there a long time; it wants to be heard. But there will be nights, now, when you wake lighter, something has been lifted, and you may wonder which of your helpers was sending you love in your sleep. Thank them. Send them thanks. But know they were grateful to hold you.
Shimmer
Shimmer
For a while, I thought I wanted a second child. But it turns out the want was for exactly her, and a replay of these days, over and over and over again.
To spin every minute with her into a shimmering forever.
She stops on the rocks, pauses our climb, to hand me a tiny leaf. I would call it red but she insists on pink. “Keep it,” she says, “put it in your pocket. Look at the other side, too.”
I move the leaf between two fingers, inspecting both sides, wondering how I decided one side of a leaf is front and the other is back. It is, perhaps, pink. Worthy of noticing. We forget to really look when we think we know something already. Autumn colors: red, yellow, orange. Or we can open to infinite shades, which she does with one flutter of her lashes.
Later that day we visit Leif Erickson Park to look at the roses and the big lake. “Let’s play dance class,” she says. “I be the teacher and you be the honey.”
‘Honey’ is her word for ‘kid,’ but it layers in so much more: that this little person is loved, safe, golden. She spins our word into what it should be, was probably meant to be. We twirl among the roses, me following the dance teacher’s instructions, and then we fall to the grass dizzy and gaze up at a clear blue sky.
She wants to collect petals, so I tell her only the fallen ones. We maze through the garden, gathering colors, delicate and bright. Each petal–a sign tells me–is full with water you cannot see. Contains multitudes. Tangerine, coral, butterscotch and peach. Ivory shot through with lavender, strawberry red. I lay my petals in a flat pile between two fingers; she crumples hers in a fist. We run when we spot a new color, and then drop to our knees–as if in prayer–to gather.
As my pile grows I realize it is familiar, and close my eyes to faint memories I can sense but not see. Through cemeteries or backyards, me as a honey, crumpling in both hands my collection of tiny, rainbow magic.
With eyes closed, I go to that worry place: Am I doing it right? Is my body okay? Is the money enough, does the math add up, do we have too many things or too little? Did I hurt that person with the careless thing I said, has he forgiven me for all those years ago?
You would think this is my favorite place to be, for how often I visit. I know the chorus well; it is busy and accusing. It makes loved ones look like strangers and insists there is something wrong with peace.
But then my eyes fall open and I see her little hands folded across my chest. She is curled into me, a ball of warmth and trust. My heart paces with her breath–a leap with each inhale.
Do I have a worry now? Just that I would miss this moment, worry it away. That I would forget my responsibility to joy.
She says, “Air,” when I ask what she learned today at preschool. We have two pink lungs that breathe it in, and when winds form it can erode the land.
She holds a tiny parachute in her palm. They flung them into the sky to see the effects of air pressure. The yellow parachute has a baby duck popping out of a pink shell attached as the passenger, and I picture 17 small bodies throwing their ducks, watching to see if they will make it to the sun. The handout sent home that explains the lesson reads, “Stronger Than Air” at the top, and I stare at it like a puzzle because it sounds like air was the victor every time.
”Fireflies glow in the night,” she says, looking out the bathroom window as we brush her teeth for bed. “They light up the dark all, all, all the days.” She puts her face close to mine so our noses touch and I can look into her eyes like a telescope. She asks if we can go outside to see them and I offer maybe on a different night, and then instantly wonder why we close the door on magic.
In the mornings I sit outside to watch the sunrise before she wakes. It is September and the air is getting cooler. The time has come to go south, and flocks of birds fill the lavender horizon, changing to iridescent as they glide into the clouds. For three mornings I watch this, amazed by their formations, feeling life in color, their orchestra of flight.
In the mornings that follow, when they are suddenly gone, I am surprised to feel a loneliness without them. Only in their absence do I notice how full they made the sky, and–I guess, for those few minutes–my heart.
In memory, beauty blooms. Fireflies spark only against the dark night. We see the opportunity for magic in the seconds after we’ve turned away. The contrast of absence creates a beautiful friction, the way pressure on a parachute reminds us we had hopes to fly.
Eventually we will lose everything, and we can wait until we reach the ends of the universe to see how it sparkled. Personally, I am trying for the elusive unlock, to see the wonder in now. It’s a losing game, but there are moments–sweet moments–where I find a way, like the birds, to be stronger than air.
Personally, I am trying for the elusive unlock. To see the wonder in now.
In the car wash as soap foams our windshield: “Rainbow, Mama, rainbow!”
To think I almost missed it.
I recommit to seeing with her eyes.
Colors are endless; everything is sky.
Do you know there are days in the moon’s cycle when it disappears from the sky?
Saying goodbye to a loved one is a kaleidoscope of light slipping through fingers. How can you capture all there is to say with words and kisses alone? If hymns of golden sorrow could dance in cupped hands, they would hold enough strength to grant wishes.
We can’t stop the end but we can look into the eyes we know by heart, release lanterns and open our palms to the sky. We can say, I will take you with me to all the rainbows, each pink and white flower petal, every sunrise somersaulting into the sky.
After a long time, we can find hope again.
Do you know there are days in the moon’s cycle when it disappears from the sky? It is right before the new moon comes.
It can’t rain all the time.
Was the most precious part of this trip hula-hooping at the outdoor smoothie shack under the bright autumn sun? Or was it throwing pink and blue stones into the velvety lake and watching the perfect circles quietly form?
No.
It was sitting in the backseat of the car with her, one of her hands in mine and the other dirty palm clutching the fifty-cent pony we bought at the tourist town thrift store; the Lake Superior wind through the rolled-down windows blowing her hair across her face like golden prairie grass as we shot up the winding Gunflint Trail; him in the driver’s seat, the hands I know and trust on the steering wheel, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror as if to say, Look at what we have built together.
The man on the sand dunes is crafting giant bubbles with two long sticks, releasing them out to sea. The delicate orbs reflect the morning sky in snow cone colors: first rose and mint, then boldening to hot pink and teal.
A father videotapes his toddler’s early footsteps across the sheen of wet sand–joyful, clumsy jerks forward with bare feet. The dad shimmers with praise that carries beneath it a promise–there is no wrong, there is only learning–and when his son falls he glitters him with morning kisses.
(Can you see, deep in your heart, that the world is full of magic?)
Last night on the beach I watched three men wrestle with a kite at sunset and when the sky turned black I saw the big dipper for the first time since I was twelve. I had just stopped looking for it.
I came to the Oregon coast alone though I have a husband I love and a daughter who holds all of earth and ocean in her small hand. I came to the coast to be alive, to allow life to move through me, to sit on driftwood eating saltwater taffy under a watercolor sky. It is a practice, to remember who you are, beneath the clocks and streetlights and decades of spring-times waiting for something else. Lately, when I’m laying next to my sleeping daughter, I’ve found myself looking at my phone instead of at her. What am I waiting for to settle in right here? A life doesn’t need permission to be lived.
At Haystack Rock, you can’t take anything with you. There are signs everywhere that say it. No shells, not the sea stars, no rocks. If you take the anemone out of the water, it transforms from an open green starburst into a dried-up black husk. You can take pictures but they’ll never do justice to what you see. All you can do is clap with strangers when 1-2-3-4-5 puffins are spotted, propelling their wings through the air. You can greet the man with his camera, the woman up to her thighs in icy April water. When a small octopus is spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time, you can be a part of the community that scrambles to find a pail so that water can be poured over it, giving it oxygen and life.
Meet me in the tidepools where we can’t take anything with us; we can just hold tight to the moment under a bright, honest sky.
Be open to life being better than you ever thought it could be.
Unexpectedly beautiful, like snow on a beach.
Eventually, often on the other side of pain,
there is the gentle pink-gold of sunshine.
The pink-gold light is here now, with me in the world where I can see it. A slow glow circling one bright moment in time. With every tiny move made by this small person the pink light spreads, making the air around me ineffably lighter. With every curl of her fingers, every twitch of her small lips, the pink light spreads.
It is spreading.