Tag Archives: alone

Dear Diary

Posted on by under Secret Places

“Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.” —Anne Frank, June 20, 1942

“She found that when she didn’t have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down.” ―Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

***

I am 14 years old, sitting cross-legged on my yellow bedspread behind the locked door of my bedroom. A college-ruled three-subject notebook is open in my lap, and I scribble away, thoughts coming to me faster than I can get them down on paper.

Excitement about the cute boy on the bus who actually said hello to me today. Anxiety about the oral report I’m expected to give in social studies class tomorrow morning. Heartache about being ignored in the cafeteria by a girl I used to consider my best friend.

***

I am 20 years old, a junior in college, tucked into a wood-scarred booth in the campus grill. Snow is piling up outside, and I am settled into my favorite study spot with a hot mug of tea and piles of manila envelopes full of submissions to the literary magazine, of which I am co-editor. I arrange a stack of blank index cards upon which I will record my impressions of the poems and stories.

But first, I open the hardcover black and white lab book that has served as my journal since last term’s poetry-writing class. Now that I am no longer expected to periodically turn it in for review, I feel a new-found freedom to write without editing myself, comforted that no one will read my private thoughts but me.

I write about my confusing romantic feelings for a male friend who happens to be dating someone else. I vent about my concerns for my father, who is weathering the downturn of the steel industry and seems to be aging at presidential speed between my visits home. I jot down prayers and snippets of Scripture to comfort and encourage myself.

***

journalI am 29 years old, working in a job that I love, in a city that I love, involved in a quirky inner-city church that I love. I am sharing a quaint townhouse with two other single women who have become good friends. And I am falling in love with a man I met seven years ago, but started dating only after we lived a couple hundred miles away from one another.

Every evening before I go to sleep, I pour my heart out on paper, into fabric-covered journals given to me as gifts and filled at a record pace. It isn’t decision time yet, but what if this is the man I am supposed to marry? What will this mean for the life I am building in this place, with these people?

Over the next several months, in the pages of several more journals, those questions are answered. I am even more deeply committed my job, my city, my friends, and my church. I write with excitement about buying a house and living alone for the first time in my life.

***

The day after I turn 40, my mother, diagnosed seven months earlier with pancreatic cancer, goes into hospice care. I open a Word document on my laptop and type my grief and fear and rage onto the screen. Tears stream down my face as I hit save and shut down.

***

I celebrated my 50th birthday last month. For a decade or more, my journal entries have become more and more sporadic, as I check in to write at least twice a year—on my birthday and on New Year’s Day. Email and blog posts and social media have replaced my hand-written diary as venues for self-expression. Almost everything I write has an audience.

As I wrote my annual birthday journal entry in the leather-bound diary that I only occasionally crack open these days, I made a resolution. I haven’t missed a day of writing in my journal since.

***

Amy bio YAH

Alone in Central Park

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

New York City has iconic buildings. Movies and television shows are set there. It’s a magnet for business and the arts and everything in between. Who wouldn’t want to live there?

I had been to the city a few times. I had ridden the subway, wandered through FAO Schwartz, and even watched from along the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So, I was comfortable with New York or at least felt confident I would be sooner rather than later.

I waved good-bye to my brother as he drove back to Philadelphia. I was in my new home, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Yes, it was actually a dormitory, and it was for graduate school, but I was living there. It was my new place.

The weather that first Sunday in September was storybook perfect. Blue skies, light breezes, and deep greens. I wanted to be in Central Park. I packed some reading material, found the subway stop and hopped the ‘B’ train. As the train rumbled along, my stomach churned with anticipation. Each subway stop was destination to be studied and stored in my memory. The reading material would have to wait.

Finally, Central Park.

NYC-Central-Park-from-abovIt oozed vitality. Baseball games, picnics, concerts, and walking tours. Each step further into the park revealed more. Where would the next winding path leave me off?

While more an observer than a participant in this exotic landscape, it was part of my home. And I was determined to know all I could about my new home.

A huge line of people was formed. Curious, I struck up a conversation with a girl with a pretty smile, “What are you waiting for?”

“For Shakespeare tickets.”

“Oh.”

“Shakespeare in the Park tickets.”

“All these people are here for that?”

“Tonight’s the last night, and it’s supposed to be great.”

“Which play?”

“The Tempest with Patrick Stewart. You haven’t heard about it?”

“I’m not from around here.”

We talked a while. She was cute and friendly. Her boyfriend seemed to like her too. “Hey, do you mind saving our spot for a little while? We’ve been here awhile and want to go for a walk.”

“I don’t mind.” And I didn’t. Waiting in line for Shakespeare tickets – did it get any more New York? With the couple gone, I took out my book and read the Fitzgerald novel I had in my bag while I noshed on my bagel. I couldn’t focus. The humanity overwhelmed me.

But I knew no one. And no one knew me.

When the couple came back twenty minutes later, I was happy to see them. Their arrival meant my departure. After a, “sure, no problem,” I walked away and left the park.

A few days later, school began. Despite my desire to go back to Central Park, I was too busy settling into my classes and all the responsibilities that entailed.

Then one night, news came of a woman attacked in Central Park. The woman had been jogging on East Drive near the Lasker Rink at 103d Street. Police had a number of details: dragged down a 20-foot embankment, killer apparently tried to rape her, violent struggle, and body found sprawled by stream under a stone bridge.

She had been dead three hours when another jogger found her. Despite all the details, police could not identify the victim, and they asked for help. Finally, her identity was discovered. She was from Brazil and was described as living a solitary life. The murder dominated headlines for weeks. The police were stumped.

Had I been there? Was this where I was walking just a few weeks back? Was I in a dangerous place? Should I have been more careful? Did the woman jog past me on an earlier run?

I was fascinated over her and the story. How could someone live in such a big city and have so few connections? How could someone be murdered in this city of constant activity, and no one see the gruesome act?

On a trip back home, my parents asked, “So, what do you think about living in New York?”

My answer wasn’t simple. The same thing that I love about New York was the thing I hated about it. I could go anywhere and know no one. The ability to be anonymous was freeing and exciting. Trappings of expectations were gone. However, despite being surrounded by hordes of people wherever I went, I was alone. All I saw was a faceless throng.

And I wondered, “Did anyone see me?”

ME (1)Larry Bernstein is a freelance writer, blogger, and educator. He and his family live in North Jersey. He writes about education and religion as well as business profiles. Really, he just likes to tell stories – both his and others. He blogs at http://larrydbernstein.com/me-myself-and-kids/ and is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Writings.of.Larry.Bernstein.

 

To see what I could see

Posted on by under Alone in Place

I had travelled more than a thousand miles to be surrounded by people, yet there I was, alone on a hard red-dirt trail in the Santa Fe National Forest.

To be clear, I was “alone on purpose,” as Nicole Morgan so deftly phrased it in her recent guest post. But following through on this intentional aloneness had taken great willpower. By choosing to set off solo on a hike that afternoon I was voluntarily leaving behind the potential of great conversations and new friendships—the very experiences I had in mind when I devoted a week of time and a sum of money to attend a Glen West writing workshop.

Many people at the Glen arrive in search of space and time to think and write, but as a full-time solitary writer who longs throughout the year for “colleagues,” I went to the Glen to fill that space and time with people. I needed a break from being alone with my thoughts and words, and during my first three days there I had accomplished just that. The mornings’ inspiring conversations in my non-fiction writing workshop transitioned into lunch hours sitting with authors I’ve long admired. Afternoons spent around courtyard tables, hearing about writing projects others were working on, gave way to more conversations over dinner, followed by engaging author and artist talks. Each night found me fighting the need for sleep as the extroverts and night owls gathered for more talk and laughter over whisky or wine, late into the night.

By that Thursday afternoon I had reached a state of “satisfyingly full” and knew some solitude (beyond the fast-asleep kind) would be good for me. It was one of those moments of awareness that separates childhood from adulthood: when you know that something—maybe eating those greens or getting up early to exercise—is important for your wellbeing, so you do it even though you don’t really want to.

I didn’t really want to be alone, but I knew it would be good for me, so I set out on the nearby Atalaya Trail to see what gift Aloneness might have for me in the midst of so much togetherness.

photo (9)The hard-packed ground was dry and gravelly, a shade of burnt, orangey-red that might as well be called New Mexico Red. I passed by Juniper and piñon, cacti, yuccas, and sagebrush, breathing in a heavenly-yet-foreign blend of scents that added a new layer to my aloneness: I was alone in an unfamiliar land.

As I continued walking, I began to wonder what range of unfamiliar creatures might call this arid region home (rattlesnakes? scorpions?). Then I recalled the coyotes whose sparring the night before had awoken me in my narrow dorm room bed, the windows open to the cool night air. Suddenly, alone took on multiple layers of meaning: I was not only by myself, far from others, but I was 7,000 feet above sea level in a foreign land, surrounded by potential dangers. The cell phone in my pocket didn’t even have service. I began anxiously singing, for company:

The bear went over the mountain,
the bear went over the mountain,
the bear went over the mountain—
to see what it could see.

I couldn’t remember what the bear saw, so I stopped singing and walking to just breathe—to calm the tinge of fear I felt and focus my mind on the quiet and the beauty that was all around me.

After walking a bit further, I reached a trio of wooden plank steps that carried the trail up and over a gravel road. Turning around, I lowered myself onto one of the steps, opening my water bottle and taking in the view below, the path I had just walked. The college campus, where all of those conversations and friendships had taken root the days before, looked small, but there it was, waiting.

I pulled my journal out of my backpack, turning to a page where I had taken a few notes while the poet Scott Cairns had read to us an evening or two before. A line from his poem “Draw Near” had especially captivated me:

For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered far to find.

I had traveled all the way to New Mexico to be with other writers and artists—I needed new conversations and different perspectives to help reframe the story within me. Then I had traveled up this mountain for time and space alone, in a land so different from the one I know that I couldn’t help but be aware, notice, and respond—not intellectually but viscerally. And all of those miles, all of that wandering both with others and alone, had helped me meet what is very near, in my heart.

photo (8)

Island, Dharma, Cup

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

“It was a bad breakup that brought me to the dharma,” a teacher once told me. The dharma — and whether or not I’ve been brought to it — is an open question yet. But it was surely a bad breakup that brought me to the island. And the island that made me whole — not just once but twice, so far. It’s good knowing there’s a place that heals heartbreak, because life can be generous with the heartbreak sometimes.

I first found the island in the pages of a catalog. I was just twenty years old, stuck in a humid, landlocked city and itching to get free of a relationship that was hurting. I felt bound to my lover by the delicacy of her mental health; if I went for a long walk to look at the magnolias, I might come home to find her in the bathtub, bloody from a half-hearted suicide attempt. I couldn’t even get to the “bad breakup” stage until I got her some Prozac or something, but that was easier said than done. Going away to college seemed like it might let her down gently. So I looked for the furthest college I could find and found it: a bare refuge of a school, small, out of the way, on the northern ocean’s edge. A place I could start again.

When I told my lover what I hoped to do, she applied and got accepted herself. So my triumphant ride to freedom was on a Greyhound, half the country over with a woman who, by the end, would barely speak to me. That was a pretty bad breakup.

Halfway UpWe went such different ways that few would believe we’d ever known one another. Free, finally, to take long walks without having to worry what sadness might be waiting for me on my return, I fell hard in love with that island. I got a bike and rode it off roads and on, deep into woods bringing nothing with me but my thirst; and I drank from dripping rocks and soaked moss and boughs laced with fog. I would throw my bike into the brush at the base of a mountain trail and climb over red rocks up into a sky that fell over ocean and pine. Until I was finally strong enough to leave.

And it would be there, to that island, that I would drive almost 20 years later, having learned that marriage can be a multiplier of loneliness. That your heart can break with longing for love, despite the ring on your finger and the child you created together out of your two bodies.

I found myself, once again, climbing those rocks up into the sky, this time with a daredevil child in tow and an old dog that preferred the gentler trails. We climbed higher than the vultures and watched their finger-wings glide below us. We’d walk out like dancers on bits of board into a swamp and sit quiet to hear the peepers. I carried my daughter on my back when she got weary, pulled ticks off the dog and I woke early, to see the sun purple the nearest hillside before anyone stirred. And my heart knit itself back together in the astonishing, delicious aloneness.

I wasn’t lonely there, until a few years passed and brought me into love again — unexpected, unsought — and yet there it came, just as thunderous as heartbreak, just as undeniable as the ocean. And I mourned to leave the island, but love rendered it the wrong place to be; if I stayed, I stayed alone, with my love far from me. So I followed love, back to the mainland and away. It nearly broke my heart to do.

It’s been five years now and I haven’t been back since. And I haven’t really needed to.

There’s a story about a teacher who describes the dharma by holding up his teacup. “This is my favorite cup,” he says, “I love it in every way. And I consider it broken already.”

I like tea and I like teacups and I first heard this story as a caution against getting too attached to things. I could also hear it fatalistically: nothing lasts forever, so be ready. But the first part of the story is essential, I think, the part about loving something in every way. Because one of the ways things can be is broken — and hurt, diseased, suffering. What kind of love encompasses even what our hearts rebel against?

On the island, I can be alone and whole, not aching for any place but where I am. But I’m not from there, I’m from away. From the places where I’m broken already, and learning to love, with this heart I have, in every way.

*   *   *   *   *

Alison on a rock“Island, Dharma, Cup” is by Alison Coluccio. Alison lives with her partner and teenaged daughter in Ithaca, New York, in an urban eco-village, where she loves gardening to build bird habitat and fun food. In her not-spare time, she studies plant genetics at Cornell in a USDA lab. She’s worked with people and plants in Togo, West Africa and Irapuato, Mexico, and her writing on seeds and spirituality has appeared in Parabola. (Landscape vista photo, above, taken by Caitlin Regan.)

 

A brief personal history of an extrovert, alone

Posted on by under Alone in Place

I am nine, and I’m standing at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes, utterly alone.

The dishes are my job every other evening, which means every other evening I feel a sense of abandonment and despair—the most acute embodiment of “woe is me” that a middle class American child can experience.

It is fall and getting dark earlier, so when I stare mournfully out the kitchen window toward the backyard, hoping for a bit of beauty or distraction, only the vague silhouettes of bare trees and my own sad reflection are there to keep me company.

I’ve finished washing the glasses and silverware, but the piles of tomato-sauce-glazed plates and—worst of all—pots and pans still loom large. In the next room I hear my dad complain about a referee call in the game he’s watching on TV. I hear my mom cheerfully greet Sasha, our dog, as she lets her in from the back yard. My brother passes through purposefully on his way to get a schoolbook from his bedroom. And I am alone with these dishes.

Of course, I’m not really alone. The rest of my family is within reach, but they seem emotionally out of touch. So from an early age this becomes my definition of alone. And I hate it.

*   *   *   *

I am 16 and in the backyard reading Pride and Prejudice for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s spring break. My boyfriend is off on a trip to North Carolina with his best friend, and all of my closest girl friends are somewhere warm with their families. But surprisingly I don’t feel sorry for myself for being stuck at home with nothing to do. Instead, I’m getting a start on my tan, enjoying the rare early-April warmth and indulging in a week of reading books, old and new.

Suddenly it’s easy to remember why reading had been my favorite pastime as a younger child, before it had gotten lost in the mix of boyfriends, tennis practice, school clubs, and a part-time job. On this April day, I’m happily reacquainting myself with my love for books, and also with the warmth of the sun after a long Michigan winter.

I am completely alone but it doesn’t occur to me that I’m alone, because I am completely content.

*   *   *   *

I am 20, a junior in college, and I am falling in love with someone who seems, in at least one important way, to be not like me: I am falling in love with someone who loves to be alone.

He shares an apartment with a group of guys across the hall from where I live with my friends, and an open door policy has been established. As his roommates watch TV before dinner, I watch him take a cup of tea and a book out to the hammock he strung up on the balcony. As my friends and I talk and goof around before bed, I see him walking home alone after several hours in his painting studio.

Suddenly I am certain that “alone” is something I’m not good at, and I see that as a flaw—the result of insecurity and a sign of shallowness. It has not occurred to me that my love for being surrounded by people—for being in the thick of conversation and debates, silliness and laughter—is a product of who I am, how I’m wired.

Likewise, as I’m falling in love with him I see his ability to be alone as something admirable, deep, and brave—not as a product of who he is, how he’s wired.

I’m hopeful I can learn from him.

 *   *   *   *

I am 30 and married to the painter—for eight years already. Our toddler and infant are both tucked in their beds for the night, and I am sitting alone on the loveseat in my cozy sunroom, an issue of The New Yorker open on my lap.

As an exhausted young mother, this moment should feel more delicious than it does. The house is quiet, and within the realm of these walls I have the freedom to do whatever I want. But what I want most is companionship, conversation. A look of recognition and understanding, a dose of empathy for whatever small trials the day brought. Someone to help me laugh.

I flip to the magazine’s table of contents, hoping to find something with the right mix of intellect and heart—the sort of piece that engages both my mind and emotions the way a good conversation might.

It is fall, and mostly dark outside the row of tall windows to my right. But in the back corner of our yard a bright square of light shines from the old one-car garage, now a wood shop and studio where my husband works each night on an art project he is preparing for an upcoming show. After this show is installed, there will be another show to prepare.

A lover of logic, I turn to it, hoping to find comfort: My husband teaches all day and needs every hour he can spare to create the art that drives his career. I get that.

My head is able to reason out my aloneness, but that doesn’t make it feel OK anywhere else.

*   *   *   *

I am 34, and I am alone.

My two busy daughters, now four and six, are in bed for the night, their questions and negotiations, stories and songs silenced by sleep.

photo (4)I brew a cup of tea then sink gratefully into the sofa to work on a sweater I’m knitting. Remnants of the busy day are scattered here and there throughout the house—a Playmobil scene carefully arranged on the coffee table, too many pairs of shoes and rain boots by the front door, a small stack of dinner dishes in the kitchen sink. But it’s OK, I’ll get to them later.

Since my divorce, I’ve been able to let go of the unhelpful sense that it’s someone’s job to keep me company. I’ve also been able to quiet the inner nag insisting that it’s my job to keep the house clean. When you’re alone, the consequences of waking up to a messy kitchen are also yours alone. Maybe it’s time to teach the girls how to wash the dishes, I think, as I pick up my knitting.

For now, I’m just sitting on my sofa, alone, and it is good. It’s good because I’ve finally learned that alone and lonely are two different things. I’ve learned that being someone who derives energy and ideas from interactions with others is a part of me to embrace and nurture, not to fight. And I’ve learned that savoring time alone allows me to process and express all that I’ve soaked in from being with others.

Now I can see that “alone” has always been important to me, and I’ve even been good at it, in my own way. Finally I’m able to call it what it is—just “alone,” apart from lonely—and embrace it for what it is: a gift of respite and reflection, and nothing to fear.

*   *   *   *

Q&Sdishes

 (No one should ever do dishes alone.)

Table for One

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

Looking back, that empty booth across the table from me was just the next in a long line of red flags and warning signs I rationalized away. This time, the reason for his absence was said to be a co-worker who needed someone to bail him out of jail. He wouldn’t be back in town until late, after dinner. It seems an outlandish story when I think about it today, one of many outlandish stories. Now I know some of these stories were lies.

I have no real frame of reference to know which ones were true, but to call them all lies seems the task of an uncharitable, bitter woman.

Regardless. That spring day I believed, or at least accepted, the story. Over the many years we were together, we always had a long distance relationship. That dinner date was no different. I drove two hours through central, rural, Georgia to get there. So, given the hour and my growling stomach, the best option seemed to be to just go ahead to dinner. Alone.

“Just one,” I said to the hostess. I settled into the booth and perused the menu. After I had ordered I took the ever-present novel out of my purse and began to read, stopping often to check to see if he had called. I was somewhat self-conscious about sitting at a table in a sit-down restaurant alone, but no one seemed to care at all. It dawned on me that my aloneness was awkward and uncomfortable only to me.

Inside my head I was fighting off the doubts and questions about my three-year-old relationship. I didn’t want to be alone, so it had been relatively easy to accept the cancelled plans and the strange stories. As I sat there alone at a restaurant table and no one looked at me in pity or shame, I began to wonder if perhaps alone on purpose would be a better option than alone again one more time because he failed to come through.

4869866579_2e5565c27c_zIn retrospect I can see that, somehow, that dinner made me stronger. It was not the first time that our plans had not worked. It was not the first time he had changed things at the last minute, disappointing me. It was the first time I kept the plans anyway. The first time I still showed up, lived the moment, and went forward instead of letting my world stop. I could have grabbed a quick dinner in a drive-thru, eaten the fries as I navigated the road back home. But, I didn’t. I sat in the restaurant I had planned to go to and had the dinner I had planned to have that evening. I wasn’t trying to “still live life” or “embrace the moment” that night.  It was simple, really: I was hungry and the restaurant was there.

So, I sat at a table alone and ate dinner.

* * * * *

A few months later, I broke up with that boyfriend. Or, at least I tried to. The words “the end” were there but for reasons that exceed the time and space I have here, I cycled back into him in a destructive pattern over and over again. We were never “officially” together again – but the energies of my day and my mind and my heart were frequently still wrapped up in that toxic relationship.

A couple years later, still caught in the cycle of trying to really end that relationship, I moved to a town near Chicago, alone, for a job. I would often walk or take the L train  to the movie theatre one evening a week and then to dinner afterwards. I’d sit in the dark theatre, no one on either side of me, and enjoy the show. Afterwards, I’d use the side exit that led out right by the door to a restaurant where I would walk in and say, “Just one.”

I usually had a book, but not always. Sometimes I would just eat my dinner with only my thoughts to keep me company. Sometimes I lingered: ordering an appetizer or a dessert or a drink. Sometimes I ate quickly before heading home. But I often thought of that first dinner alone and reminded myself it was good to know how to do to this.

Those years of dinner and movie dates with myself were part of the process of trying to get out of the cycle. I would sit there and remind myself:  I can do this. I can eat alone. I can sit at this table and have dinner and have a life and I can be fine. I can move forward.

Eventually the cycle back into the toxic relationship stopped and I was free.  Looking back I can only recall a handful of times in the past few years where I’ve eaten alone at a restaurant. It wasn’t an intentional choice to stop, but I guess that inner part of my soul knew I didn’t need those dates with myself as much anymore.

I rarely have to eat alone, but I know I can. And that has given me strength.

* * * * *

red stripeNicole says her love language is “eat the food that I cook” and is never happier than when there is a crowd gathered around a table eating food that she had fun preparing. She is thankful for all the friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers, and casual acquaintances who have filled the tables of her life. Nicole works as a freelance editor specializing in theology and social ethics and writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com. She tweets away @jnicolemorgan

Restaurant photo by Bart Heird

 

The Weight (A Balancing Act)

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Uncategorized

westchester lagoon

I wake up Monday morning, head in a fog and the sky a heavy gray. Maybe I need to pick up the pace on our Lord of the Rings bedtime reading, finish the series and find something lighter to read to the boys: This morning’s gray resembles a specter, a phantom seeping through the windows.

There is light, too. It’s April in Alaska. We wake to light now, but today it’s muted by the undeniable presence of sagging clouds gathered and draped across the Chugach mountains, shrouding them from view. But at 7a.m. in April, the dance between light and dark in Anchorage feels, for my East coast origins and conditioning, properly balanced, stable, “normal.”

“Be grateful,” I growl to no one but me.

Still, I hesitate to rise, to sit up. I rub my hand around my face, press my fingers into my eyes.

I was up till midnight grading papers, a task that segued into restlessly mulling over a number of personal matters while I thrashed around under the covers. At 3 a.m., my seven-year-old, Matt, leapt into bed with me on the heels of a bad dream. Once asleep, he proceeded to kick me through the night – an unintended reminder he was close.

I hear Matt sifting through his Lego drawers in his room across the hall.

Over a swift and admittedly pouty, self-pitying moment, I envy my sister in Virginia, who lives across the street from my parents and can frequently ask them to assist with carpooling or hosting her three daughters.

I also think of my married friends. Envy tag-team parenting for the “bazillionth” time since my boys’ mom and I split in 2011.

“Stop,” I growl. Remember: We’re here. Here and nowhere else. And we’re doing our best.

Aren’t we?

Some days, it’s hard to know.

I swing my legs over the bed.

I’m reminded of a montage scene set to feel-good music in Judd Apatow’s This is Forty, where Paul Rudd adoringly wakes his daughters for school – affectionately tousling one’s hair, canoodling the other, and playfully rubbing his hand around his teenage daughter’s face.

So, I “Power Up” – I motivate, inhale some of whatever so enviably possesses Paul Rudd characters. I breeze into the boys room and cheerily declare a robust, “Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!”

Matt, from his place on the floor, amidst the rubble of his Legos, looks up at me doe-eyed and crestfallen and meekly whimpers, “Pop? Do we have to go to school today?”

He’s still in his pajamas and between his strawberry-blonde bedhead and the spaceship designs stretching across his rail thin limbs, and his childhood-specific pot-belly rounding through his top, I am utterly smitten and vulnerably open to complying with anything he wants.IMG_5937

No! I want to tell him. No, we don’t! No school today! No work! Today we’re building forts in the living room and watching all the Star Wars movies! While eating Pirate’s Booty and ice cream and PB&J! I’ll tell work we took a, a, a Family Care Day, because our “us” is more important than desk work, than paper pushing and Microsoft Outlook; more important than racing you guys to school and then racing to grab you at after care, and then slogging through rush hour traffic and trying to make and eat dinner before 7pm and then bathe and read LOTR at a sane hour so that we can rise rested to start the whole rat race all over again tomorrow!

Instead, I sigh and tell him, “Oh, buddy, I know. I know. I used to want to skip school so many times when I was a boy.” He limply groans and sighs.

Sam’s body shifts under his blankets. Limbs akimbo, he slowly snakes them towards himself and then out again, stretching awake. He blinks a few times and sits up. He rubs his eyes and smiles.

Sam, for all eleven of his years, has possessed the magical ability to welcome each day the way you can imagine the Dalai Lama does. Or Mary Oliver. His waking hours are one long embrace of everything and anything around him, so much so that I’ve often wondered where he really came from, if the stork accidentally brought his mom and me a congenial ambassador or motivational speaker’s child. Never mind getting Sam into commercials or acting, as some have suggested: I often think he’s on the verge of presenting a viral TED talk, or might go solve the world’s problems with Bono.

Today, as with every day, Sam looks around, all smiles and sparkle.

“Good morning,” he sighs, standing.

“It’s dark out there,” he notes peering through his window, “do you think it’s going to rain today?”

“Might,” I reply. “Looks like it.”

Sam stretches once more and bounds to his dresser and pulls out some clothes.

“Wow,” he sighs, “I am so tired.”

Just say the word, I clamor inside. Say it. Say something like, “Can we not do this today, Pop? The weekday runaway train thing we do?”

I stand thoroughly poised to call a sick day, to announce “Fort Building Day.”

He turns and proceeds towards the bathroom.

“Take a load off, Fanny!” he sings.

Ok, wait. No fair. He’s boldly singing the chorus to my favorite pick-me-up song. The one I play on the stereo the way others take a daily vitamin.

“…Take a load off, Fanny!” he continues, running the bathroom faucet, “Annnnnnnnnnddd!…Put the load right on meeee!!!”

I look at Matt.

“Ok, buddy. Time to get dressed.”

mattMatt sighs and groans, pouts. I want to tell him, as Sam’s dutifully reminding me only by the way he embraces a day, something about how we’re in this together, that we can do this, and that every day is somehow always in some way infused with surprising moments of joy, of grace. I want to tell him all that, but he’s seven, and I can’t expect him to agree or understand now.

I pat the top of his head, and he leans his head on my knee. I tell him only, “I know. I know.” Because I do.

There’s a balance to strike somewhere in all of this, adrift as I often feel we are, alone together and striving to keep up with the pace of things in the terrifying, stark, and beautiful spaces we find ourselves. Rather, I imagine, or I hope there is.

I lean one way and then the other, stroking Matt’s hair, wobbly and wavering.

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Talking on the Train

Posted on by under Guest, Together in Place

I had lunch with a stranger once in the crowded food court of Union Station in D.C. There were no empty tables and only a few empty seats. When I saw a woman sitting by herself at a table, I asked if I could join her. She readily agreed.

I was in between trains, a Chicago-to-D.C. leg behind me and the rest of the journey home to Philadelphia ahead. Asking to join a stranger at their table is not within my standard mode of operation. Perhaps it was the 17 hours I had just spent on the train that inspired my unusual behavior.

On long-haul trains, if you go to the dining car you sit with people. And if, like me, you enjoy passing the hours of train travel in the observation car watching the country roll by, then you sit with people there too. On a long-haul train, you chat and really listen to the answers because you have all of the time and none of the cell signal. This slow-paced, low-pressure atmosphere makes my people-loving introvert-self bloom.

Between the trip out to Chicago and the ride back East, I spent almost 40 hours there-and-back talking to strangers. I met a man in the midst of his journey home from Thailand. He told me about an ex-wife and a child in Peru—how his world travels introduced him to people, but pulled them away too. He bought me a drink and we talked for hours as the view of the countryside gave way to midnight blackness. Eventually he asked me, “Are you happy?” I told him I was, mostly. He nodded, leaned back in his chair, and stared off into the darkness outside. His eyes had said more: that being happy was something he didn’t quite understand.

One morning after a few bumpy hours of sleep as the train chugged through Ohio and into Pennsylvania, I went to breakfast and was seated at a table with a woman. She asked me about my life. I asked her about hers. We lingered over our coffee as she told me about working with Catholic Social Justice groups in her teens, trying to end capital punishment. The fact that people still fight for the same thing today gave her mixed emotions. I told her about my Christian Social Ethics coursework—what I was learning about inequality and how the church participates. I told her it was encouraging to meet her. She said the same of meeting me.

Amtrak observationSeven-hundred miles of steel track is enough space for strangers to share many years of memories. You can settle in with wine or coffee. You can relax into the seat. The scenery of fields and small towns is buffer enough for the natural pauses. There is no hurry; your stop is likely states away.

After joining fellow travelers for those many miles, to join a woman sitting at a table alone in a crowded food court seemed natural. As she told me about how she spends her days, the realization that she was homeless began to dawn on me. I took a second look at the food she had in front of her—one small order of fries. I told her I was finished eating and asked if she would like any of my leftovers. I think if I had thought about that a bit more, I would not have asked for fear of insulting her. She took my offer though and gladly ate what I did not. I eventually wished her a good day and a safe walk back to her night shelter, thanked her for allowing me to join her table, and went to board my train to Philadelphia.

This second-to-last last part of my journey was on a regional Amtrak train, which means smaller seats and less room to move about. My seat-mate told me about his job in the banking industry, seeming proud of his achievements as a district manager. Before long he had his laptop out, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi.

In Philadelphia, I switched from Amtrak to regional rail for the journey out to the suburbs, choosing a seat next to a woman who had on head-phones. The train car was silent but for the noise of the tracks and the intermittent stop announcements.

The transition was stark. Our day-to-day lives are not built for long chats and shared meals with strangers. Yet, people’s complicated lives exist even when we are just commuting home to the suburbs. Homeless people, lonely people, overlooked people. People who are on a journey to somewhere—people who fight for equality and people who wonder if it’s really possible to be happy—these people are always next to me.

It is of course easier to say that I want to engage than to actually engage. The meeting and eating and talking together requires intentionality on the part of all the participants. When I can remember that the people around me have stories of lives lived full of heartbreak and hope, then I am more willing to keep my eyes open for ways I can give. Even if what I have to give in the moment is only a listening ear or my not-yet-finished lunch.

*    *    *    *    *

fall“Talking on the Train” was written by Nicole Morgan. Nicole’s first long-distance train trip involved Thanksgiving dinner with a dining-car table full of strangers. She booked a sleeper-car once and loved it for all its nostalgic charm, but much prefers coach class where there’s plenty of time and room to meet her traveling neighbors. Nicole writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com  and tweets away @jnicolemorgan

 

 

Alone in the Light; Together in Darkness

Posted on by under Together in Place

The lights suddenly flipped on. The bells started ringing. A young altar boy rushed to light the candles. Black robes began flying into the air and then were caught and flung again, straight up in the highest part of the vaulted ceiling of the church.

The moment had arrived.

It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Dominican priests typically wear a white robe with a large cowl neck collar and long piece of vincent-mcnabbfabric down the front. All those things have fancy names, but I will spare you the lesson in monk fashion. For special occasions, like the days of Holy Week, Dominicans add a long black cape that covers over the white robe. It is a solemn gesture, a gesture of reverence for the solemn events that are being remembered. To my eyes, it is a shroud of darkness, of mystery. The cape always draws my attention, and something in me wishes I could wear a cape without being thought of as a Lord of the Rings fangirl gone wild.

Watching the black capes thrown into the air, I was standing tiptoe in the courtyard of the church, peering over the heads of hundreds of standing figures. I was in Poland as a solo personal pilgrimage to honor a saint that I hold dear and was spending the week prior to Easter making day trips and exploring Krakow.

I’ve always loved the Easter vigil, the very long liturgy of Saturday night that begins in darkness and ends in Easter joy. I didn’t understand the Polish but I understood that moment. The church was suddenly bathed in light; darkness was literally cast aside. My melancholic spirit knew: He is RISEN!

This year, I was again in the presence of the white-robed Dominicans for the days leading up to Easter. My friend had taken several courses at the Dominicans House of Studies and wished to attend the liturgies amongst the preachers and teachers whom she loved and respected.  I was up for anything and not-so-secretly hoped that cape throwing was a part of the American tradition. (It wasn’t. Only cape removal and tactful folding.)  Nonetheless, I encountered another tradition.

We attended Tenelargebrae, a candlelit chanting of the Psalms that led into the Holy Week liturgies.  A chapel full of robed religious singing Scripture in the ancient prayer of the Church put me into a reflective, quiet place.  Stillness came; silence set in.  As the chanting ending, all of the light was extinguished.

The entire church stood in pitch blackness and perfect silence.

Time passed.

My mind raced, “How long are we going to silently stand here? How are all these people going to get out of here safely?”

More time passed.  My mental soundtrack didn’t let up, “I wish I could read my program so I understood what was going on.”

And then, a moment.  A moment of standing in darkness with 200 other people. A moment of being in silent worship together; a moment of turning my attention toward Him.

Breaking into that moment, a wretched clanging of drums and cacophonous noises filled the darkened chapel.  On and on it continued, a noise that disturbed the peace of the space and the peace of the spirit.

Just as quickly as it began, the noise ended. The lights returned and the service ended.  I glanced down at my program, “All creation shudders at the death of the Lord.”

In the first, I was alone and rejoiced to see the darkness cast aside.

In the second, I stood together in darkness and worshipped and trusted the chaos had meaning.

To both I answer, “Amen.“

Together, Undefined

Posted on by under Together in Place

It was 8 pm on my daughter’s 15th birthday, and I remained a Mama on a Mission, gearing up for the home stretch.

The mission, of course, was making my daughter feel as special and loved as possible—a mission that’s more challenging, I’ve discovered, when your children are teenagers and less likely to buy into the enthusiasm in your voice as you sell them on some random idea: Bowling would be a fun birthday treat! If my daughter had her way we’d be seeing Broadway shows in New York for her birthday, but in reality I had less to work with.

By 8 pm on this particular birthday, we had already completed our typical activities: a mother-daughter outing (which in this case involved a new ear piercing); a birthday dinner at the restaurant of her choice, with the seven people who make up her immediate family (mom, dad, sister, stepmom, half-brother, stepdad, step-sister); and finally dessert and presents back at home. My now-15-year-old already had a big party with friends the night before, so now what?

“Do you want to go anywhere?” I asked.

“No, I just want to be home,” she said, smiling contentedly.

“Should we rent a movie?” I suggested. “Or play a game?” I know very well that games are not her favorite pastime, but I couldn’t help myself. In my family experience, both as a child and an adult, this is what you do when you’re together: You play games. Sitting around a table covered with the pieces of a game is my family’s quintessential definition of togetherness.

“No, I just want to be home and do whatever,” she said, a trace of exasperation edging into her voice. “I’ve had an amazing birthday! Can’t we all just be here but do our own things?”

As an extrovert, I (not for the first time) had to pause and forcibly wrap my head around this less structured version of “Together.” I could see my other daughter re-calibrating as well, as we tried to imagine that the birthday girl’s idea of a fun birthday might not look exactly like our plans for her. After all, we were there to serve! To entertain! To focus all of our time and energies on HER! And she wanted to go up to her room and try out the new guitar pedal she just unwrapped? We had to let that sink in.

“Well…OK. If you’re sure,” I said.

She was, of course, sure.

6647530355_0233217d07_zAs the sounds of reverberating electric guitar and my daughter’s pure voice serenaded us through the ceiling, the rest of us looked at each other in somewhat sheepish agreement: Let’s play a game. In her own way, she was right there with us.

*   *   *   *   *

While I probably wouldn’t choose “alone in my room” as a way to spend my birthday evening, upon a bit more reflection I realized that I know a thing or two about this desire my daughter often has: to be together yet alone.

Since February 2002, after nearly a decade of working in populated office settings, I’ve worked essentially alone, as a writer. When I was in the process of deciding whether to take the leap and start my own business, my biggest fear wasn’t Will I have enough clients? or Will I make enough money? It was this: Will I be able to work alone?

Not only am I social—someone who is energized by being in the mix, having people to go to lunch with, and feeling connected to others who are dealing with the same bosses and projects—but I’m also most creative in collaborative settings. In other words, I worried not just that I would be lonely working by myself, but also that the very skills I was selling might fall flat if there weren’t people around to bounce ideas off of and provide critique.

I decided to take the leap anyway, and was lucky enough to discover that technology was my safety net. It was the growing availability of wireless Internet, in particular, that prevented me from gradually slipping away from myself, sitting day after day at the desk in the corner of my living room. Wireless Internet meant I could take my laptop—all that really comprised my “office”—to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, where I could be together yet alone.

photo (3)In that coffee shop, I learned it was the mere presence of bodies and voices—being surrounded by activity and the gears of many brains thinking and creating—that I craved more than anything else. In the unnatural silence of my empty home I felt slightly on-edge and easily distractible, but the buzzing white noise of the café allowed me to dive into my work and ride a stream of creative flow for hours.

There’s simply something powerful—at once comforting and freeing—about being autonomous yet in community, whether that community is family or strangers at a café. It’s an experience that carries a certain rightness and balance: In a single moment and place, it acknowledges and respects both our “sameness” as humans and our “difference” as individuals.

Ultimately, both identity and empathy are strengthened through that single form of togetherness. When I think of it that way, I can see what a wonderful gift it was to give my teenage daughter on her birthday—and what a wonderful reminder it was for her to share with me.

*   *   *   *   *

Photo of the game “Carcassonne” by Aslakr. Coffee shop photo by Kristin Tennant.