My Heart Don't Wish to Roam

I have never posted a piece of writing with more trepidation than I have posting this entry.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that I'm straying into memoir, which is LLM's territory and which she writes with a great deal of verve. The second, and perhaps more important reason for my anxiety is that when I write poems they're usually about people/events/ideas that are very comfortably in my past. Everything that I've written below is fresh and complicated. I don't have my normal distance here, and that's terrifying.

So, dear readers, instead of a funny, self-deprecating essay about how I became an uber-nerd, you have the below. Lauren tells me it's good enough to post, so I am posting.
xo,
KMJ

***

My friend Kerry is responsible for two of my most lasting obsessions. That is, my taste for high-end scotch and my deep and abiding love for sci-fi television. Since encouraging me to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer two years ago, she's been my Virgil, conducting me deeper and deeper into the lower levels of nerdiness.  My gift to her (if one can call it that) is to send constant gchat updates about how wonderful the Adama family is or why I love Angel more than Spike.

During one of our more recent nerd-a-thons, Kerry said something that's been rolling around in my mind ever since. She reminded me that all good things are also, somehow, sad. Last night I had a long, pleasant dinner with some people who are very dear to me. As I was walking home I was looking at the stars and it occurred to me that with the exception of the year I spent in the Twin Cities and the four months I lived in China, I have always been able to see the stars. This is a big thing for me. I am one of those people who would like to pick up astronomy as a hobby. I look at APOD every day and was incredibly upset with NASA canceled shuttle missions.

I began to wonder about Duluth and light pollution and before I knew it, I was thinking about these people and this place that have become so precious to me. The thought of leaving them, even for a good job, a city I love, a new adventure, takes my breath away. Then I remembered what Kerry said, about good things also being sad. We were speaking about something very specific (television, actually) but it was so apropos as to be almost frightening. 

I don't think that I want to say that every thing good  is also sad. Rather, I'll say that every good thing comes at a cost, and try as I might, I never seem to be able to calculate how high those actually are . Over the past eight years here, I've seen and learned an incredible amount. Much more than I ever would have guessed when I first moved to Minnesota. But the cost of all of these experiences has been high--at times I wonder if it's been too high. One relationship precludes another that could have been deeper or more meaningful. Studying theology meant putting my love of literature away for a time. Understanding my religion intellectually has led to losing my faith. 

I've written about this before, but when it comes to my personal life, I'm not great at expressing emotions. I can do the opposite poles of anger and happiness pretty well, but when it comes to anything more nuanced than that, I find myself unable to express it comfortably. I experience it and struggle with it, but I do so privately. So when it comes to all the ambiguous feelings wrapped up with the cost of good things, I feel a huge spectrum of emotions, but I can't talk about them.

This is the real reason I love fantasy and sci-fi. The emotions portrayed are always raw and intense without (at least, when the writer truly has command of their story) sentimentalism or emotionalism. The choices that the characters have to make are always huge and seemingly obvious, but the costs of heroism or courage or love--all good things--are deeply personal. For Frodo Baggins, the cost of saving Middle Earth was The Shire. For Katniss Everdeen, the cost of saving the Districts was losing her home and her family. For the Doctor, the cost of being able to travel through time and space is real, equal companionship.

Moving to Duluth does not mean never returning to Central Minnesota. Meeting new people does not mean sacrificing old friendships. While my own costs are deeply personal, as they are for all the fictional characters I have grown to love over the years, they lack the same finality. I am not being asked to destroy the One Ring, bring down a corrupt empire, or travel to a distant world. I am making an adult decision, moving on to a different part of my life. My choices, it seems, are small indeed.

But that's where this genre of writing turns the reader on her head and along with its command of emotion is the other reason why I love it above any other genre. It reminds you, time and again, that it is the small decisions that impact the big ones. Lucy hid in a wardrobe. Bilbo threw a long-expected party. Luke lingered with Obi-Wan. Small choices led to the opportunity for heroism on a grand scale, but at what cost?

The odd thing is that it is the cost of the heroism (or courage, or love or...) that reveals to these characters who they are at their core. Inevitably they find that they are made of sterner stuff than they thought. They struggle and triumph and are forever changed because of small decisions that turned into bigger ones. They recognized that everything good is also a little bit sad. 

So now, as I pack away my books and DVDs, as I take the pictures down from my walls and reconcile myself to the idea that I won't be the one to force Lauren to sit through Battlestar Galactica, I find myself repeating Kerry's words again and again, reminding myself that every single journey for one of these characters started with one small decision. And that even when things are difficult or sad, there's always room for the good as well.

Life it seems, much like a well-designed TARDIS, is bigger on the inside.

summer days

Greetings, all.

We are in the midst of a very warm spell. Our heat index reached 116 today. JOY!!! So, some of what I've written is a bit of an exaggeration in the first paragraph. Alas. The idea is still the same.

LLM

***

The hotter the better, I say. Heat, humidity, sun. Bring it on. I never realized I was such a summer junkie until I moved to Minnesota. Minnesota summers taunt and tease. They pretend. They flirt with heat and humidity. They do not, in any way, resemble the real thing. Instead, they are a brief respite between one winter and the next, a respite of warmer, mild days that do not make up for the negative temperatures, brutal winds, and frozen lakes.

In Minnesota I have to defend my appreciation of summer, my obsession with sweltering temperatures, sweat, and stuffy days. I long for them; I crave them. And everyone around me wonders if I should be in a padded cell.

Summer days are, however, more than heat and humidity. They are hours at the swimming pool—swimming laps, learning how to dive, avoiding squirt guns, and whining about adult swims. They are sleeping with the windows open before we had air conditioning, listening to the rain on the awnings, the soft breeze ruffling the Laura Ashley curtains. They are mom in the garden, digging up plants and moving them, watering flowers to encourage them to grow, me reading to her as she moved from place to place in the garden to work. They are evenings on the deck, grilling out, fetching beer for family, barking dogs, and fighting over the hammock. They are catching lightning bugs with the neighborhood kids and looking for locust shells with dad. They are reading, reading, reading.

Summer days are the purest form of happiness.

Good News/Bad News

Hello, readership.

I have news. You, the readers, are allowed to decide whether it is good, bad, indifferent or any combination thereof.

Lauren and I have agreed to start blogging again.

The past few months have been a nightmare of deadlines, job-searching, looking for apartments, and you know, finishing my dual Masters degrees. However, now I am embarking on a new career, moving to a new city, and LLM and I agreed that it's time to start writing together again.

I'm glad to be back.

***

This week's theme: Summer.

***

Summer 

You are not the oak tree outside my window,

sturdy and beautiful, stretching to the morning light.

Or the lightning of a midsummer storm, brilliant and terrifying.

For my part, I am not the fresh cut hay,

soft and fragrant, warmed by the afternoon sun.

Or the first rose of summer, beautiful and understated.

And we most certainly are not the loons on the lake,

mated with one another for the rest of our lives.

Instead, you are the one walking down

the country road winding next to the lake.

And I am the one who is walking down

the winding country road with you.

And we are the ones walking beneath the oaks,

seeing distant lightning, smelling roses,

and freshly cut hay, listening to the loons on the lake,

who, as it turns out, don't actually mate for life.

Forgiveness

Once again, I'm struggling with the prose section of this particular theme. Rather than continuing to try to force something out, I'm going to post the poem.

xo,
Kelly

***

Forgiven

John 8:2-11

"This is going to hurt." When he said it, I thought he meant

my hair, where they had pulled it, or my knees,

where they had scraped along the pavement.

Perhaps he meant the stones they were all gathering,

from which my body was already cringing. Or, if nothing else,

the horrible names they were all shouting, the lies they were telling.

Those all hurt, or would have, with the opportunity.

Years later, I came to realize that he meant

his own casual parting words,

and the sudden, stinging knowledge,

that I had been forgiven.

Ugly

As an aside, this week's short writing piece does not coincide at all with the poem. Also, after Lauren read it, she described the poem as "like getting punched in the gut" and "brutally sad."

xo,
KMJ

***

I am not a cute runner.

Before I go any further, I need to state that there cute runners. My cousin is one of them. All of her marathon  pictures look like Nike ads. Her husband is the same way. After they sent me pictures of the Ironman they ran last September, I wanted to know if they had been retouched. They were too perfect.

I am not one of those runners. I'm pushing some extra weight.  I don't have a beautiful stride, matching running clothes, or a bouncing ponytail. I'm usually moving pretty slowly. Watching me run is pretty ugly.

Despite all of this, I still run. I run because at the end of a long workout, I feel the way a Catholic is supposed to feel after they go to confession. Light. Refreshed. As if everything that's gone wrong in the past few days has been left behind me on the road.

I think, ultimately, that's worth a little ugliness.

***

How It Ends

She loved to cook and he to eat, so that's how it all began. She would cook. He would eat. They would talk about work or their spouses, perhaps drink some wine. Her recipes became more elaborate, his waistline, larger. They both made overtures at something else, but it never went anywhere because it couldn't go anywhere. He carried home leftovers from her meals; she took away his laughter at her jokes. One night, after years of food and wine, laughter and a little sadness, he wiped his lips and cleared his throat. "I'm leaving my wife," he said. "For who?" she asked. "Someone else." He replied. They were silent for awhile, until she met his eyes and said "I have an early meeting." He left and walked down the block, realizing halfway to his car that he had forgotten the leftovers she always prepared. He went back and rang the bell. She never answered. 

Table

On having furniture.

Love,

LLM

***

The transition to adulthood happens slowly and all at once. You wake up one morning and think, “Wow. Things are different.” But then you start to look back at the past few years or months and you realize the change has been happening for a long time. I didn’t notice I was an adult until I’d lived in my apartment for about eighteen months, but when I thought about it, I realized that the shift started to take place when I bought my dining room table.

I had moved into the apartment less than a month before I bought the table. Most of the furniture I had was handed down to me from my mother. A love seat, chairs, side tables that had belonged to her, that had been replaced in recent years as she and Ruth established their home together—these pieces came with me. They came with stories. My bed is cast iron and had been my grandmother’s when she was young. My dresser belonged to a great-grandfather. My mom and dad found the rocking chair at an antique store. The bookcases were new but the books I put on them have tales of their own, and not simply those between the covers. Even the desk, which had been bought as a graduation gift a few months earlier, already came to the apartment with a story—one for which I have yet to be forgiven.

The dining room table was the one major thing I lacked in this new apartment of mine, this new life of mine. It was my first major purchase for my life as a nonstudent. The dining room chairs sat, unassembled, on my living room floor for about a week. They stubbornly refused to be put together. The allen wrench wouldn’t tighten the screws properly, and the pieces wouldn’t line up correctly. And so for a week I allowed them to settle in to the space, to realize that my home is a good place for dining room furniture. It’s a silly thing to say—that these inanimate objects needed to get comfortable. Somehow, though, I thought it might work.

It did. A week after I bought the table and chairs, I assembled them with no problems.

The table is a powerful symbol in Christianity. The altar is where we share our story as followers of Christ; where we come together to celebrate and grieve, be complacent and frustrated, give and receive. The table at home is no different. As I assembled those chairs and that table, I knew it would be a place of gathering and goodness.

I knew it would be a place for stories.

Firsts

We have been rather remiss in posting.

I'd like to insert a list of perfectly valid reasons--reasons that would make the readers of this blog be both awed by the writing and dazzled by the courageousness of writing in the face of so many obstacles. That's the kind of list I would like to have.

To be perfectly honest, on my part, I haven't been writing. I've been desperately trying to track down the last bit of writing I did, hoping and praying that dear God I really have written something since November, but it's simply not true. After finishing my thesis and classes last semester, I did not want to have anything to do with my computer except watch Netflix. I have been absolutely lazy. I read three novels and spent the rest of break zoning out in front of the television. I'm not particularly proud of that choice, but after 2.5 years of having comps/language exam/thesis to worry about during breaks, I was grateful for the opportunity to shut my brain down for an extended period.

It. Was. Glorious.

It's also slightly remiss to say that I did nothing except watch television. I went to Christmas parties. I cooked. I met new people. I visited with old friends and family. I met actual people who read this blog and are not related to me. I went vintage thrifting. I read three months of back issues of Harper's Bazaar. I didn't check my grades. I lounged and did laundry and gloated over the variety of expensive kitchen gadgets I received as Christmas presents. I updated the list of my most loved/most hated words. Generally, I just recharged for this semester.

But now. It's time to get back into academic and other-kinds of writing. So, without further procrastination:

Our theme: Firsts

***

Dinner


It was not veal piccata or bouillabaisse. It was not boeuf bourguignon. Not steak helene. Not puttanesca. It was certainly not braised scallops or mussels cooked in wine. It was not any of the other gourmet meals I would make through the years. It was just a chicken, breaded in herbs and the closest I could approximate  to my grandmother's recipe. Fried in a skillet while I was drinking a Pabst and we were talking idly about the day, the plans for the weekend, the weather. It was nothing Julia Child would provide for a dinner party, but sitting at kitchen table in our jeans, with our beer and the late early-summer sun, it was everything I wanted.

lies

On jazz.

LLM

***

There is no better accompaniment for one’s despair than the lie of jazz. The beat so peppy and hopeful. The voices so enticing and smooth. The instruments so loud and playful. It overwhelms the listener with slow, sensual beats. The rhythm moves, emotes, evokes, and challenges. It is praise to the gift of feeling—the gift of being with another.

But the words. The words of jazz do not lie. Even the songs of love found are tinged with the knowledge of love lost. The lament simmers under the music. It is disguised by joy. It is hidden until it breaks forth unexpectedly—painfully. One is carried by the tune and is awakened slowly to the meaning of the words.

Perhaps I would have lived blissfully unaware of this quality of jazz had my uncle not committed suicide. I would have recognized the unrequited love—who can’t identify with that?—but I would not have noticed the deeper lament, the grief of jazz.

My first outing after I returned home from my uncle’s funeral was to a local wine bar to listen to a jazz group that plays there every week. I’ve been attending these jazz nights off and on for nearly two years. In the midst of grief I wanted the overwhelming noise to wash over me and cleanse me of grief. I wanted to be reminded of play and joy and goodness.

But what I found was lament. The songs of praise had become songs of cursing. What had been musical frolicking had become barely controlled chaos. I no longer heard the joyful shouting but rather the cries from the depths.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his followers, “Those who have ears should hear.” In graduate school, one of my professors was fond of asking, “What do you hear when you hear?” Perhaps we hear what we need to hear. I needed lament, and so I heard it. Over the past few months I have gone to jazz night alone, with pen and paper, to write about the experience of living with grief. These nights have reminded me that there is not only lament in the midst of hope but also hope in the midst of lament. Sometimes lies are nothing but truth.

The Nutcracker

Hey, readers.

Yes, we do have a blog. Unfortunately, it's been insanely hard to write lately with my impending thesis defense.

Hopefully we'll be able to pick back up now that my defense is on the horizon.

***

Our theme for this week: Joy



Christmas has always been a big deal in my immediate family. When we were younger my father had the most amazing ability to pick the coldest, snowiest day of December to go for the Christmas tree, which was always a family affair. We'd ride around together looking for the tallest, thickest fraiser fir we could find and then would hall the behemoth back home to put it up in the living room and decorate it. Mom always hung popcorn strings on her Christmas tree as a kid, so we would start stringing in November. Pa loves lights and would do justice to Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Thankfully, I've always been afraid of heights and a klutz, so I've been excused from the treacherous rooftop decorating duties.

Christmas always brought cookies and fudge. Hot chocolate and brandy. Christmas hats and off-key sing-a-longs in the kitchen. Christmas day brought a mountain of presents in the living room in the morning and all of my Prosen family cousins in the afternoon. Grandma in her Christmas sweaters. Good things to eat and Trivial Pursuit or Taboo after dinner. When I was much, much younger, Christmas brought a new dress from my Grandmother.

My favorite Christmas tradition, however, began on a whim. My aunt (a physical therapist/athletic trainer, I think) was working with the Milwaukee Ballet Company and they offered her two tickets to annual performance of The Nutcracker. For some reason unknown to me, Kathy gave them to my mom. Because ballet was a girl thing, Mom took me to it rather than my brothers.

We went for many years after that first one. I loved it. I loved getting dressed up and the ballerinas. I loved the music (and still do.) I loved the fantastical story line and the belief that my toys really could come to life. I loved the ginger ale and the cookies we shared at intermission. I loved the the brief pause my mother and I both treasured from constant talk of football and hunting and whatever other manly conversations were happening at home.

What I loved most, though, was the time with my mom. I miss it tremendously now that we've stopped going. What I want for Christmas this year is the chance to get dressed up together in our fancy clothes and spend an evening watching the dance progress and sharing a ginger ale in the lobby.

***

The Nutcracker

When I was small, my mother took me to watch the Milwaukee ballet company dance The Nutcracker. I had a new Christmas dress, an early gift from my grandmother. It was taffeta and rustled when I walked and when I shifted in my seat. Mom wore a second-hand velvet dress and my great-grandmother's fur coat. I thought she was the prettiest lady there. During the intermission she bought me a ginger ale and we shared an ice cream sundae. She told me she was proud of how I was behaving myself--I barely fidgeted at all. Then she gave me the cherry on the top of the sundae. When she asked me what I liked best about the show I told her it was dresses and the way the ballerinas twirled. We kept going for years, and she always asked the same question over the same sundae. Some years I liked the Nutcracker Prince best. Other years it dressing up, or people watching at intermission, the Christmas decorations in the lobby or the music. Now, at twenty-six I still love all of those things. But this year, when she asks me, I'll tell her it's her second-hand velvet, inherited fur, and the cherry she still saves for me.

thin space

This one, oddly enough, came much easier.

LLM

***

The Irish talk of thin spaces—space where the sacred breaks into everyday life, space where the divine is felt. Thinness is not reserved to physical space exactly. Yes, I’ve been in churches where the divine drips from altar and ambo. But I’ve also met thin people whose gentleness and peace reflects the stillness of God. And I’ve experienced thin moments where I was attuned to the heartbeat of Christ—the most significant movement of the universe, as one of my college professors would say it.

This has been a summer of thinness. Grief is one of the thinnest spaces a person can experience; God is so abundantly present. At the same time, God is utterly absent. Somehow this absence is thin too. The emptiness is a chasm waiting to be filled, an opportunity for wholeness and grace.

It took three months for me to recognize how thin this summer has been. It was the day after my cousin Edyn’s baptism. My aunt and uncle’s house was full of people and the chaos that accompanies out-of-town guests. My other cousins—one six years old and the other four—were begging to play video games. My aunt was preparing the casserole that would be dinner. My grandparents were watching television. My mother and uncle were discussing cameras. A few other people were milling about. It was not a time for stillness. I stood in the kitchen with my aunt, watching her work, while I held Edyn for a rare moment when she wasn’t fussing as a result of being held by someone she didn’t know. Her eyes drooped and, amid the noise, she fell asleep. “I’m going to take her upstairs,” I told my aunt.

“Okay. Just put her in the crib. She may fuss, but she’ll put herself back to sleep.”

“No,” I said. “I just want to hold her.”

Edyn was a month old at this point. Tiny. Perfect. Her beautiful round head. Her sweet little newborn lips. Her delicate eyelashes. For two hours, I drank her in. I gently held her little hand. I rocked her and wished good things into her life.

And I knew that it was thin space—that we were not alone.

After my uncle died in May, I started building a stone wall, a protection against hurt. I have been living a season of stoniness. The prophet Ezekiel says that God will take the people’s stony hearts and give them hearts of flesh. I traded in my heart of flesh for one of stone. Stone hearts don’t hurt so much. They don’t beat either. What I’ve learned is that stone is not impervious to thinness. Somehow God sneaks in—while you’re gently rocking a baby or otherwise preoccupied—and reminds you that stones crumble.

beginning

Anne Lamott writes about shitty first drafts. Since I read about these drafts, I've found great comfort in them.

It's been a while since I've put down words. These ones have wrestled their way out, but for about a week I've not been able to make much of them. When I think about it, my brain freezes. Home is too close and yet too far. There's so much to say that I can't say much of anything. It's an interesting phenomenon--one I've noticed in my writing about my mom and dad as well: I could write volumes about my dad despite the fact that he's been dead for over twenty years, but writing about my mother is nearly impossible.

I feel like my musings here are beginnings; there's a world behind these words, but that world isn't quite visible. Yes, as the writer it's my responsibility to let you in to that world. But, I'm tired of sitting on these words so there you have it.

Soon...vulnerability.

LLM

***

“Home is a feeling I buried in you.” (“Breathe” by Greenwheel)

The places I call home have buried themselves in me. I, in turn, have buried myself in them. Home, like God, is love, support, challenge, hope, and comfort. Home is noun; it is people, places, and things.

Two years ago I moved to Minnesota. I had been here for two years before that while I got my master’s degree, but the second moving was real. It was a commitment to a place for longer than two or four years; it was indefinite. As a result, it was terrifying.

I do not generally think of myself as a person who has left home. Instead, I carry the homes I’ve had before with me. The somewhat simple act of creating a space for myself has forced me to weave together these disparate places; it has made me acknowledge their hold on me. My apartment is Kansas City, Atchison, and Saint John’s all rolled in to one. It is reminder of my mother, coffee bar, place of prayer, shrine to learning. The space I have created is a haven for stillness and peace. It is a place of blessedness.

Ain't Misbehavin'

Before the beginning of this week's post, a brief aside.

Perhaps one of my favorite aspects about this blog is the way the themes bring to the surface topics about which I've always wanted to write, but have never been able to find the words. On a personal level, it has helped me sift through the debris of everyday life and focus on those things which are important to me. Most notably, my family and the impact they've had on me. It is very difficult to be removed from their daily lives. The writing I have posted here has helped me realize that.

It has also served as a connection to my scattered, extended family. When I post an updated link about one of the family posts I've done, I can count on comments from cousins and siblings from New York to Denver to Milwaukee. This connection--however tenuous and dependent on virtual communication--is one I cherish.

***

Our theme for this week: Jazz.

Grandmother Prosen is a force to be reckoned with. When my mother, her daughter-in-law, is feeling sassy she refers to Gram as Rose Kennedy--the matriarch of the family. It makes my grandmother crazy, but I think is an apt description. She keeps the family together: she stuffs the turkeys at Thanksgiving; makes us all laugh over Christmas; catches and fries all of the fish for the Good Friday fish fry at my auntie's; cares for her great-grandbabies. Most of the family still takes part of their summer vacation with her at the family cabin.

The stories from my grandmother's childhood are complicated, full of relatives and sort-of relatives. She was raised by extended family after her mother died in childbirth, so I had myriad great-uncles, great-aunts, and an truly daunting network of second-cousins-twice removed populating family stories and family gatherings when I was growing up. I loved to listen to her tell stories about my Aunt Dorothy, who made beer in her basement during Prohibition or how she met my grandfather though her family ties to the railroad.

There are two aspects of my grandmother's early life that stick with me most. The first is her love of prize-fighting. It was a strange revelation, one that Dad told me when I was still in high school. Apparently Gram's adopted mother ("Ma") loved boxing, and would take grandma to neighborhood fights when she was a little girl. I love the image of my grandmother in a dressed up and sitting ringside at a fight.

The second is Gram's love for jazz. I've written here before about Grandma Baker's love of bluegrass, country, and hymns. Grandma Prosen loved jazz equally, and was responsible for my first exposure to it. She tended more toward the vocal/lounge variety of music, perhaps not what most people would consider jazz. But through her, I was introduced to Billie Holliday, Etta James, Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitgerald. I first fell in love with the the song "Ain't Misbehavin'" on a rainy afternoon in high school. Pirating music was easier then, and I had made a CD for the two of us to listen to in the kitchen. She was drinking coffee and keeping and eye on the meatloaf. I was probably reading or doing homework. I still remember Ella's smooth voice giving me pause, drawing my attention from parsing sentences or Fitzgerald's short stories.

Gram didn't say much, aside from small comments of approval when one of her favorite songs came on. She said nothing during this song. When the CD restarted, she pulled the meatloaf from the oven, wiped her hands on a towel, and hugged me goodbye.

"Thanks for the walk down memory lane, kid."

To this day "Ain't Misbehavin'" is a song I have to hear from beginning to end. It makes the breath catch in my throat and makes my chest tighten. I can't hear it without remembering that rainy afternoon and the smell of my grandmother's cooking.

***

Ain't Misbehavin'

When I hear Ella Fiztgerald's smooth voice

I do not think of falling into love;

slow-dancing in the arms of some well-dressed man;

or even the bar, where, while in graduate school

I would drink Scotch and listen to a jazz on Mondays.

I think instead of my grandmother

in the kitchen in the house where I grew up.

Casually making a meatloaf and boiled potatoes,

helping me understand the meaning of a gerund,

or translate my school edition of Virgil.

I remember her little sigh of pleasure

when I had finished with my questions,

when it was time to put dinner in the oven

and sit down to a cup of coffee and songs she loved.

when it's personal

I am a memoirist. Or I like to think I am. I write about myself, about what’s personal, about my thoughts.

But I do not write everything about those things. (Nor do I think I really should.) There are certain parts of me that are under lock and key, that I don’t allow into my public writing.

I am a memoirist who doesn’t really want to reveal too much about herself.

But the poem I wrote for this theme is not that way. It cuts deep into where I’ve been this year. And sharing it with you is, well, hard. I’ve sat on this poem for about a week, debating about posting it or writing something else. And I’ve settled on posting it not because it’s a stellar poem (far from it) but because it makes me uncomfortable.

Writing is not about safety. Writing is about sharing a world with the reader, and that sharing leads to vulnerability, as is the case in any relationship.

So, dear reader, here—my heart.

LLM

***


Moments of Yes

The gentle pressure
of your hand
on the small of my back—
the steadiness
of your blue-grey eyes—
as you pull me toward you
to dance
to embrace
to move into a moment
we both know won’t last

The utter desperation
of the sun as it sets
leaving blues and oranges
gasping for breath
before they’re turned
into dark
and I step out of your
embrace
and into
no

Crash

"You're not crying are you?"

There's an edge to my voice that isn't coming from the pain of road rash or my bruised and potentially broken ribs.

"No. No. I'm just pushing up my glasses!"

"Good." I pause to spit some blood and another tooth chip into the waist high grass and then resume my ponderous, limping walk. "I hate criers."

***

"Kel, hon, it's Dad."

"Hey, Pa. What's up?"

"Mom and I wanted to see if you needed us to come up and take care of you for a few days. Mom broke her ribs a few years ago and knows how hard it is to take care of yourself."

"Really, Daddy. I'm fine. I promise."

"All right. How'd the CT scan go?"

"Laying down hurt so badly I wanted to cry."

"Did you?"

"No."

"That's my girl."

***

"After this is all over, you and I can't be friends anymore."

"What? Why?"

"Last night when you came in to check on me, not only was I in my PJs, not wearing a bra, but I was asleep with my mouth open."

"And you looked like an angel."

"Oh, go to hell."

***

If our family had a coat of arms, our motto would be "We don't raise sissies." My mom in particular is one tough lady. When she fractured her ribs she didn't cry, she cussed a blue streak. A few years later, on bed rest after minor surgery she kept getting up and driving herself to the grocery store and trying to wash the windows. Dad joked that we were going to have to put her in a strait-jacket just to keep her from hurting herself. Nothing, it seemed, could make Mom drop her guard for long enough to ask for help.

This is a trait she's passed on to me. Despite being, on occasion, a very girly-girl I am decidedly not a sissy. I clean out my own mousetraps, wrestle with my brothers, drink and cuss like a seventy-five year old sailor on shore leave. I project, I've been told, an image of invulnerability augmented by the fact that I don't cry when I've hurt myself; talk about my feelings; or let other people do things for me.

During the past five days I've had to give up the illusion of invulnerability. On Saturday I crashed my bike on the Wobegone trail. I ended up in the E.R. with a chipped tooth, myriad cuts in my mouth, road rash and bruising on my arms and legs, and bruised and potentially fractured ribs. My tooth has been repaired and the various bruises and scrapes are healing nicely, but my ribs remain problematic. Deep breaths hurt. So does sitting up, laughing, getting into/out of a chair, dressing myself, shampooing my hair, or a number of other daily tasks. Laying down to sleep is out of the question. Sneezing is excruciating.

As I am unable to do a number of tasks on my own, I've been reduced to asking for help for everything from zipping up my dresses in the morning to taking out the trash. I've been utterly self-sufficient since I was eighteen, so this is slightly problematic. In the past week, I've had to learn to both ask for and rely on others. I've had to look at my construction of myself as invulnerable.

I've found it lacking.

***

What The Palm-Reader Told Me

At twenty-one I had my palm read by a Romani gypsy. She did not have scarves or bangles, but eyes so dark they terrified me. After one look at me she asked: "You are also a gypsy?" It was a secret my grandmother had told me years before, after too much dancing to and too much wine at a wedding. I never told a soul. "It's in the way you hold yourself." She said, and smiled and resumed with my palm. I would be, she told me, prosperous in business and fiercely independent, but unlucky in love, among other things. For years, I forgot everything that she said, recalling it only after a bad break-up or a good job interview. I thought of it again this morning when you caught my eye in the mirror and laughed. I was struggling to zip up my dress and my contortions caught your attention. You came up behind me, ran the zipper smoothly to the top and kissed my shoulder. When you left the bathroom to butter my toast and make my coffee I couldn't help but wonder if she had gotten something wrong.

Quilt

A little something about what I've learned from my grandmother, a quilter.

Love,

LLM

***

Quilter’s hands—a thimble on one finger, the soft tug of thread and needle through fabric, a careful hold on the quilter’s hoop, and, when the last stitch is made, a gentle smoothing over of the finished product as she inspects her work. I’ve not seen my grandmother quilt for nearly ten years, and yet these images of her are among the most powerful ones I have. They evoke stillness and peace, comfort and rest.

The nature of quilting is such that one takes fragments and makes them into a whole. The pieces, nothing in themselves, become something more, become art. In the knitting together, everything becomes important; no scrap is without purpose.

As a young girl I did not learn how to quilt from my grandmother, but I watched her piece together many quilts. I watched her choose the fabrics, the colors, the pattern and sew them into something new and glorious.

As a woman I am learning the art of metaphorical quilting. We Murphys are in the process of grieving. The thimble fell off, and the needle pierced the skin. Deep. Shaun’s death has left each of us feeling fragmented, torn. We are quilting this loss to our other ones. The Irish Chain is suddenly showing up in what was the Dresden Plate. The colors don’t match and the patterns make no sense. But we keep stitching anyway.

Every night I fall asleep under one of the quilts my grandma gave to me. It reminds me that the pieces do come together, that what is torn will be mended, that healing comes. That there is always another thing to be stitched.

How it Begins

Our theme for this week: Home

Weeds with shallow roots are the easiest to pull.

I learned this at a very young age, pulling weeds in my mother’s garden. She taught me how to dig around the long, deep-searching central spike of a dandelion plant, and that pulling up the small shallow roots of plants that haven’t grown very far down into the soil was easier than letting them go for another hour, another day, another week. She also taught me that sometimes the frailest looking plants are the most resilient. Field bindweed was her favorite example. A delicate, clinging vine with white blossoms that looked like morning glories, it was harder than hell to pull out of the garden. It was deceptively frail looking, but had a network of shallow, webbed roots underground that drove us crazy.

Whenever someone commented on how quickly my mother’s children were growing she would reply “they’re growing like weeds.” It was her way of acknowledging the rapidity of our change. And, I think, her hope that like the dandelions we were forever tearing up, we were putting down good strong roots.

These days, I’m feeling a little like the small weeds that keep getting turned over and pulled out before they have a chance to take hold. I’m packing my house to move for the 15^th time in seven years. I still have boxes I haven’t unpacked from my move last summer. After all, it seemed stupid to settle into something I knew was only temporary. Despite my Bohemian gypsy roots, I’m tired of packing up my possessions at the end of every nine months and shipping off to a different apartment.

Two weekends ago I went to Milwaukee. Ostensibly, I was there to retrieve a friend and bring her back to Minnesota for a wedding. I was happy to be of help to her, but I was even happier to be able to return to Wisconsin and see my family. I don't make it back to their house very often, and it was good to see them there. We spent a lot of time on their deck, watching the birds on the feeders, drinking beer, water, or coffee, and talking.

I went home because I desperately needed to see my parents, to feel some semblance of normality again. I went to be reminded of the fact that I am not rootless. If nothing else, I come from a definite place, and have definite people.

I am tired of living out of boxes, of packing and unpacking my entire life every twelve months. I'm rethinking my decision to re-apply to Ph.D. programs this year and am suddenly cognizant of a number of other things I want to do with my life. Many of these things (buying a house, becoming an Oblate, spending more time in Wisconsin, becoming a major gifts officer in a non-profit) are in direct conflict with spending the next five years pursuing a Ph.D. These realizations have put me more than a little off-balance and I needed to get some perspective on things.




One of the best and simultaneously most infuriating things about my parents is their uncanny ability to provide perspective. They are the most rooted people I know, both living just a few miles from their siblings and a few more from the houses where they grew up. They have a house and a dog. Three adult children making their own way in the world. Their roots run deep--less like the dandelion and more like those of the maple trees in their back yard. They are sturdy and pragmatic. Utterly and unexpectedly beautiful but able to take what nature throws at them. This was one of the occasions in which their rootedness was welcome. They asked me a number of questions about exactly what I want in the next few years, didn't contribute their own opinions, and encouraged many of the decisions I made. They commiserated about low-paying jobs and a poor economy and talked about the small pleasures of their own lives: 30,000 pounds of landscape block converted into a terraced garden; two of their three children at home for dinner; the hot weather finally breaking. Together we sat in the warm twilight and laughed about childhood antics, complained about our baseball team's losing streak, and slapped mosquitoes.

When I returned to Minnesota on Monday, I had no more answers than I had when I left. But those few hours we spent together nourished my own roots, reminded me that sometimes, even plants with shallow roots are tough enough to survive.

***

How It Begins

Here you are, twenty-two and waiting for your life to begin. And this is how it begins. You have no money and make stupid decisions with your credit card. You date and have sex and get your heart broken. Maybe break a few yourself. You might meet the person who makes you think that maybe bars and late nights aren't all they're cracked up to be. You might not. You'll pay down student loans and wonder if all that education was really worth it, if maybe you wouldn't be happier making copies and answering phones or fixing motors and wiping grease from your hands. And then you're thirty and perhaps you start to save for a house, hopefully you've started saving for retirement already. You could have a kid or two. Adopt a dog. Stop moving every twelve months. Plant a garden, even if it's just in a window box. You'll fight with your love about money and bills, whether or not to buy that new car. Get a promotion. Lose your job. And then your kids are growing and adolescent and hate you for reasons neither of you can explain. You buy a car, a motorcycle, maybe find an affair. Maybe just wake up at night next to the one you've always loved. Then the kids are gone, the dog has died and your hair is gray. You've stopped working one day, and then the next it's grandkids, and sleepless nights for no reason and suddenly jaw pain and a tingling in your left arm. But that's all still far away, almost light-years in fact. For now, it's just about a job and bills and sex and moving. Waiting for your life to begin.

Color

Our theme for this week: Color

My mother loves to garden. Her father loved to garden. When I went back to her house over the weekend the very first thing my mother did was take me on a garden tour.

I was glad to take it. I'm most often home during the winter months, when her gardens are covered by several inches of snow. The front, side, and very back gardens are exclusively for flowers. The garden that my father has recently redone for her is exclusively vegetables that she and Dad freeze for the winter.

My mother's gardens are lovely, striking, unique things. I love them because they are beautiful, certainly, but even more because they are extensions of my mother's personality. Anyone who looks at them can see her love of things beautiful and natural, her appreciation for things both tame and wild. Her practicality and thriftiness are apparent in her love for helping things grow.

An ode (of sorts) to my mother and her gardens.

***

My Mother's Garden

My mother's garden is a riot of color. Pink roses and white poppies. Orange tiger lilies growing next to green chili peppers and purple beets. The pink-cream flowers of late pea blossoms wind their way around the grey stone fountain. A yellow goldfinch splashes in the rusty water. My mother, a white bandanna over her wild brown hair, pulls up weeds and talks a blue streak. I worry about her hands, sliced open by weeds and stuck by brambles. Oh, Kelly she says, wiping them on her khaki shorts. We all bleed red.

escaping inwardly

Greetings, all.

For this post, I've wrestled with the role of reading: Why do I do it? What do I gain from it? What is the process? Every book places me in a different world, a different experience. But somehow it grounds me more firmly in this world and this experience of being human. Gift.

LLM

***

The room was filled with joyous, laughing people. They were celebrating: sharing a meal, reminiscing about the past two or three years, talking about what was next. Students were dressed to the nines—dresses and heels, ties and dress pants. Faculty and board members were not quite so formal; they were swept into the tide of excitement coming from the chattering students. Forks and knives clattered against plates, and wine glasses were filled and emptied.

And there I sat, my nose in a book. I didn’t mean for it to happen. The book—a monograph on music and Karl Barth—was just there: a friend was borrowing it from another friend and it was on our table. I absently picked it up, glanced through the opening pages and just started reading. No thought to the activity around me, the rudeness of this gesture. It was a book and therefore it needed to be perused.

“Lauren!” Betsy nearly shouted it. Her eyes were wide and she snatched the book from me. “What are you doing!?! We’re at dinner.”

As I said, it had not been intentional, but I had fallen into the text. That’s how it always happens. My life is pieced together with journeys into books. I slip into them and then emerge, somewhat surprised to find the world around me again, a world of plants and animals, of color, of people, of food and drink. A world that has dimension.

Reading provides me with an escape, a chance to get away and be elsewhere, a journey into someone else’s life. I have danced with Max and the Wild Things, flown with Milkman, observed grasshoppers with Mary Oliver, prayed with any number of theologians, and died with Madame Bovary. I’ve contemplated love with Mary Russell, been an old man with Eliot, and sobered up with Augusten Burroughs.

But the escape only works if I come back to my own life. These stories are folded into my own; they are not all I am, but they are parts of me. They have helped me be a child, a daughter, a woman, a friend, a theologian, a writer, an editor, and a person. Every book takes me beyond myself and, paradoxically, leads me deeper into myself. I do not read to run away; rather, in the departure from this world—of family members and friends, of grief and loneliness, of joy and hope—I enter more fully into it.

T-Shirt

Theme for this week: Comfort

I have tried no fewer than six times to write a prose introduction for this week's poem. I wanted to write something about vulnerability, fashion, and how I can't leave the house in some of my favorite clothes because they're "ugly." However, I can't get anything written that's worth reading. So, without further comment, "Grey"

***

Grey

It started as the kind of fitted t-shirt

you might wear on a date, say,

to the bowling alley or firing range.

And so it was until some unfortunate

drops of paint retired it to weekend wear.

Now, threadbare and ripped,

it smells like my perfume

no matter how many times I wash it.

It's stretched and soft,

the most comfortable thing I own.

You've seen me only in my high heels,

silk stockings, dresses, and makeup.

So I hope it will come as a pleasant surprise

when you come home tonight and find me

sitting, legs crossed at your kitchen table, wearing it

and a smile

and not much else.

Comments

Hey reader(s),

Since we first started blogging here, I've been wondering at the utter lack of comments (particularly because I'm a poet and apparently utterly self-involved.) Is our writing really that bad? Do people not like the themes? Are we both really boring?

Apparently none of these have been the case. The problem has been with Bloggers default commenting settings. These have been changed and you no longer need a Google ID to drop us a note and tell us how much you love what we've been doing, or make suggestions for themes, or ask to write a guest post.

We look forward to hearing from you.