cancer, again

It is four in the morning, and I can’t sleep.

Sometimes I wish real life was more like fiction—that there could be a neat ending to a story, and then the next chapter is about something else, something new and different. But our lives have no readers besides the people who love us enough to stick by us. And the people we love certainly don’t get to see the cleaned-up versions we would present later in essays or stories; they either see too little or too much.

My father was deemed cancer-free a few months ago, after a dramatic but ultimately relatively harmless (in the long-term sense of the word) battle with lung cancer. After a messy divorce, but before the bankruptcy that led to the loss of his small business and the home where I was raised, he reconnected with his high school sweetheart, who has spent much of the each year with him in the U.S., miserable except that she gets to have his company. After the doctors said he no longer had cancer, he made plans to move back to Greece with his love, who has a home there--to abandon his apartment, his check ups, and just go. He said he would be back next summer for a check up, and maybe the summer after that, but only for a couple weeks each time.

I was all for this. Call it sentimental, but I want my father to die on the island where he was born. In many ways, I think he never should have left; the brothers who stayed there are so much happier than he, so much more well-adjusted, though some drunken conversations with them have led me to believe this may have more to do with his personality than the fact that he jumped ship in his mid-20s in a city called Baltimore and somehow found a way, after many battles with immigration, to make a home in this country.

Of course, it was easy to say "I want my father to die on the island where he was born" when death was something that was likely to happen in the next 5-15 years.

A week ago, he called to tell me he was having trouble walking. I called the hospital where he “doctors,” as they say in Minnesota, and told them to add to his already long list of appointments for his last visit (to check lungs, blood sugar, etc) a MRI of his legs. They said it was already on their radar and he would get it. For some reason, despite the fact that, strangely, my mother's last battle with cancer began with pain in her legs, I didn’t panic.

Tonight I called, expecting to hear that the leg problem was nothing. Instead, he told me he has cancer again. He tried to keep his voice steady, but in the end, he couldn't; all of that hope and anticipation of finally going home in a couple weeks, all of that new freedom of healthy-again, were gone. He said the doctors needed to take more careful looks at today's tests and would call him next week to discuss a plan of action. But, the plan of action will likely not include the sentence, "You should move to Greece now if you want to die there."

His love is devastated; her papers have already been renewed once so she could stay with him during his first battle with cancer, but this time, she will almost certainly need to go back—and, she tells me, she should, anyway. It has been too long since she’s seen her children or her property; she has things to take care of, and yet, she doesn’t want to leave him. She is asking without asking what I can do; I tell her I'll be there for a couple weeks in late July, around the time her visa will run out, to try to put some help in place for him, at least.

We cry, and I try to think of the right words to say to her in my broken Greek. Usually, in moments of deep grief or stress or anger, my language skills actually get better; it’s as if my brain dips into my childhood memory of first-language, and I am fluent again. But this time, I can’t find even the words to tell her how sorry I am, how scared.

I text S’s college buddies and call my best friend here, and that is all I can bear to do. I am tired of sending mass e-mails to people who won’t know what to say, anyway--and the friends who are being thoughtful about checking in with me, knowing that parenting a child like S means I can't reach out as easily or as often, will hear soon enough.

Then S and I went and saw a stupid movie, “to get our minds off of it,” as she said, and then, we both tried to sleep. She fell asleep about two hours ago, finally; I’m still awake.

S and I were supposed to go to Greece in January. It was totally a sentimentally-planned trip, and one I can't really afford, but when I was 9, I went with my family over the holidays. Although my sister and father were with us, what I remember most is my mother, finally cancer free (though not for long), navigating the narrow streets of the island, clasping the hands of the people there--how happy and free she seemed, even though she was still weak, even though she was dragging her little daughters from house to house and party to party. Every time I go to Greece, I feel her presence; the fact that the people on the island talk about her constantly is a comfort to me, one way I remember who I am, who she was. I so wanted to be there for the holidays with S. I wanted to check in with my father, see how he was getting along--that was my excuse, but really, I wanted her to experience a (much-modernized but nevertheless similar) Greece over the holidays. I also wanted to see the elders at a nursing home where I have been returning every other summer for the last few years; I was supposed to be there this May, but when the class did not fill, I comforted myself with this plan to go in January.

Aside from the sentimental reasons for the trip, the fact that I want to be with my father is completely and utterly unbelievable to anyone who knew me prior to five years ago. I have spent most of my adult life writing, in one way or another, about my complicated relationship with him, though about five years ago, my work moved on to other topics—and still, I would circle back occasionally, unable to completely let go of the harm and pain he has caused me, or the immense lessons he’s taught me through both his mistakes and his incomprehensible courage and resilience. We are closer now than we’ve ever been, mainly because I’ve come to terms with who he is, and who he will never be, but also because he has mellowed over the years, and has been so incredibly kind and attentive toward S.

S loves him, something I didn't expect to happen. She wants to tell him the important things about her life--and strangely, he reacts appropriately almost every time. I love him, and I don’t want him to be sick, or to have to stay in the U.S., or to die.

And for some reason I think that all of these hours that I’ve been lying in bed, unable to sleep, all I needed was to write this, and post it, and then maybe I can get at least a couple hours of sleep before morning.

S and I will go later this month to Ohio to be with him. We had a trip planned anyway, but had not expected to see him, as he was to already be in Greece by then. We’ll simply extend the days we’re there and do what we can, and then I’ll have to come back here, like last time, feeling useless and wishing I were closer. I’ll again offer to help him move here and again, he’ll probably decline. He is in his 70s; the last thing he wants is to start over in a new town where there are so few other Greeks (not to mention an troubling lack of medical care). And yet, now, he can’t go to Greece, probably can’t stay with the love of his life.

As I write this, I am weeping, again--to me, the fact that he can't go back there for good as he'd hoped to do is almost sadder than the cancer.

All I can do is think the positive things: he will have good medical care; I will be able to help, even from afar; we are finally close for the first time in all of our lives; he loves and accepts me and my daughter as much as any man with his background and personality could love and accept anyone.

And, yes, he has cancer. “But we’ll get through it, no matter what happens,” S said tonight, and she is right.

The sun is coming up. I haven't watched a sunrise in over a year, so I think I'll go out to my back porch and just watch awhile, and then maybe get a couple hours of sleep before work tomorrow. Sometimes I think the best thing to do is to give in to the urge to write, even if you know it's going to be raw and not particularly deep or thoughtful, and even if you wouldn't normally post or share the first draft of something you'd written at 4 a.m.

Pride!

Every year since I moved to Minnesota, I’ve been going to GLBT Pride in the Twin Cities to sit at a booth and talk to alumni and prospective students about the university where I work. And every year, at one point or another, I get emotional, remembering my first Pride in Cincinnati in what must have been 1994. The “parade” included a total of about 50 people, mostly a group called the “Lesbian Avengers,” some half-naked men, and some drag queens, along with a few of us unaffiliated but politically active types. We marched on a sidewalk (there was no permit, if I am remembering correctly) across the city and ended up in a park, where a few people gave a few speeches. Then we grilled some veggie burgers and stood around either flirting with each other or talking about social justice and what we needed to do to progress the movement or both. Later that night we all went to the same dyke bar (whichever one of the two in the city was our favorite) and hung out with our friends and danced and drank, as usual.

Things have changed dramatically since I came out in the early 90s, obviously. There are still mostly-naked men and drag queens and S&M divas in the parade (and I have to admit I love this aspect of Pride), but there are way, way more churches, activist groups, politicians, and corporate-sponsored floats than any of the typical paraders. Hennepin Avenue has rainbow banners on the streetlights, similar to those that would be displayed for any other event in the city, likely paid for by the city itself. The entire area shuts down for the parade, and Loring Park is teaming with over 100,000 people (literally) all weekend. Every year, I realize when I’m packing up the college's booth that I missed an entire row of booths somehow—it’s that big.

Now that I’ve been here nine years, Pride really is also a reunion. Former student activists stop by, and they always have awesome stories about what they’re up to now. Former students who weren’t out when they were in college show up and tell me their coming out stories. This year, two students I knew well stopped by to talk about their soon-to-be born baby, and another one of my favorite students showed up, as he always does, with his mother, who, though she took some time to get to the point of supporting his journey, is now his greatest friend. And prospective students come by, excited by our reputation, hoping to get in—-or totally clueless, but interested after talking to us—-and that, too, is rewarding. In short, I am on a high all weekend, happy about every aspect of my job and life.

This year, S and I marched with Rainbow Families (GLBT families) in the parade. In the past, I’ve always watched the parade rather than marching in it, but it was great to be with other families and to hear the cheering. I wept a couple times. Lisa made a sign that said “Lesbian Mom, Straight Daughter, Happy Dog = Family,” and our dog WAS actually incredibly happy the whole time (it was his first Pride). As a side note, if you are interested in meeting women at Pride (and this probably works for men, too), just take along a dog and be sure to put a rainbow collar on him—you’ll get hit on way more than you ever did before, or at least, that was my experience this year.

But back to the parade: S and I stood out, because Rainbow Families consists mostly of lesbian couples who have adopted infants or given birth, so mostly we were a group of cute infant-to-six-year-olds wearing shirts that said things like “I love my lesbian moms” and riding bikes with training wheels and lots of rainbow bling. Only two gay male couples were there, and they had a slightly less traditional family—-kids in the 8-to-10 age range whom I suspect were adopted out of foster care, though I didn’t ask. One of them marched the entire parade on stilts! These kids took to S and our dog right away. One of them even tried to teach our dog how to skateboard (unsuccessfully, I might add). But as usual, I realized how my decision to adopt a teenager out of foster care as a single, queer woman was—-well, unusual, to say the least. Even among these "nontraditional" families, S and I stood out.

Most of the parents who have adopted kids like S are fundamentalist Christians who see adoption of special needs/hard to place kids as a calling. (I do, too, but I am not a fundamentalist Christian, obviously). I have been meeting monthly with a group of moms in my area who have made the decision to adopt such children—and I am definitely the most liberal, the only queer, the only one who is not active in a church, the only person with an advanced degree, and the only single parent. They are nice to me, though—I know at least one of them knows I am queer because we had an argument once, long ago, in the newspaper editorials about GLBT issues (and I have an unusual name, so I doubt she’s forgotten, though I can't be sure). But, I haven’t come out to them directly, which makes me feel a bit awkward, as I am very out everywhere else, from our local police force to ministers in town to...well, you get the idea.

But I need these women right now, because they help normalize what I’m going through and provide a kind of support my friends cannot. Maybe I am afraid of losing them—but I believe so strongly in being out, especially to people like them, that it is hard to justify my decision not to tell them. And yet, honestly, it hasn’t come up. My work, my political views, the fact that I’m single, the fact that I don’t belong to a church in town and don’t want to join one—all of those things have come up naturally in our conversation, and given the opportunity, I suppose I’d say I was queer, but as a single person, it’s not a topic of conversation that comes up naturally.

But what I want to write about is not how affirmed and hopeful it felt to be at Pride, or even how torn I feel about not being out in my support group, but what happened when I left Loring Park in search of the parking garage where I had, more than 10 hours earlier, parked my car. I was in a hurry, so I took the dog but left S at the booth to help her godparents (a lesbian couple from our town) and some students tear it down. The plan was that I’d get the car, drive up to booth, and we’d pack up and get out of town quickly.

But, I didn’t realize I was parked about two miles away (I’d parked closer to the parade’s start than the park), and once I did, it was impossible to do anything but walk there, as I couldn’t take the dog on public transportation or in a cab. As I left the area where Pride had taken place, still wearing stickers and buttons all over my shirt and shorts, I realized I was moving into less-friendly territory. I hit a mostly touristy/upscale area, and for awhile, things were fine—people eating outdoors glanced over at me, got quiet, then remembered it was Pride weekend and went back to their conversations. Some were even more friendly, commenting on how cute our dog was. Maybe they aren’t allies per se, I thought, but they aren’t freaked out, either.

And then, just as I was turning a corner toward the garage, across from one of the large sports arenas in town, two men walked by me and said, loudly, “I can’t believe you people are parading around on the Lord’s day when the Bible says you’re going to hell.” At this point, my cell phone was ringing, and I was realizing that I really needed to hurry to get to the car--it was already half an hour past the time I'd hoped to be driving out of town. I took the call, let my friend know I was close to the car, and kept walking. The men went on to shout some Bible verses at me—the typical, out-of-context verses--and just before entering the garage, I shouted back, “We were actually celebrating God’s love for us,” then disappeared quickly from their view.

I wanted to say more. The men were African-American, and I wanted to talk to them about how St. Paul, the only person who condemns anything even remotely “homosexual” in the New Testament, also wrote that slaves should obey their masters, and how nobody in their right minds would agree that this was God’s word now. I wanted to talk to them about the historical context of the verses they were quoting. I mean, I know this shit, backwards and forwards. But, I was afraid.

Did their race play into my fear? I really hope not. I feel like I am not a racist, but I am a white woman and live in a racist society and therefore have internalized biases that, though unconscious, may have played into my decision not to confront them more directly. If someone asked me who I would trust more, an African-American straight man or a white straight man, I’d say the African-American straight man for sure; probably this is due to the fact that, in earlier times of my life, I had some very close African-American straight man friends, and partly, I think, I generally tend to trust people who have dealt with any kind of oppression more than those who have not, for better or worse. But alone on a street in a city I am only marginally familiar with, I wonder. I wonder why I didn’t try to engage these men in conversation, and what that says about me.

Right after shouting back at them, I realized the entrance to the garage we had used earlier was locked, and for a second, I panicked. Every hate crime my friends or I have experienced ran through my mind. I ran around the garage, trying to find an unlocked entrance. Finally, I found one, but it was another 20 minutes before I actually located our car. (I learned later that this garage is the largest in the Twin Cities, and that it had closed an hour earlier. My car was one of the only cars left).

In any case, at one point during my search, I sat down on the ground against a pole and started to cry. My dog jumped into my lap and licked my face. Then he lay down next to me. After crying for a few more minutes, I shouted, “Fuck them!” The dog didn’t seem the least bit startled. I nuzzled my face against his neck and whispered, “I was feeling so good about myself, and S, and everything. But they made me remember everything bad about what it was like to come out.” The dog licked my face again, and I stood up, pulled myself together, and found the car.

Later, as we were driving onto the highway, S said, “I was so worried about you, mom. I should have come with you. I have a better sense of direction than you do.”

“I found the garage with no problem, amazingly,” I said. “I just couldn’t find the car.”

“Green, fourth floor, S20,” she said.

“You, my dear, are amazing.”

“I know.” She smiled at me. “It was so…fun. I love Pride.”

I burst into tears when she said that.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“I’m sorry, honey. These men just said some mean things about gay people to me when I was walking toward the car, and I guess I’m still upset about it. But I’m glad you loved Pride. I loved it, too, and I loved being there with you.”

“Those bastards!” S shouted. “Fuck them! If I was there, I would say, fuck you, this is my lesbian mom and I love her and I’m proud of her.”

“Well, you know, I probably should have said more, but it’s always important to be sure you’re safe, and they were the only two people around. I just wasn’t sure if I was safe. Anyway, I can usually take things like that. I’ve been dealing with things like that all my life. It’s just that…I felt so GOOD after Pride, you know?”

“Well, I would have told them, ‘go fuck yourself, go suck your own balls.’ Or, I would have said, ‘why don’t you fuck each other? Maybe you would enjoy it.’”

I couldn’t help but laugh, though while laughing, I also noted, “That is SO inappropriate.”

“But they deserve it.”

“No, it never does any good to say things like that. I would have tried to talk to them and change their minds if I felt safe.”

“Some people’s minds can’t be changed, Mom. The best thing you can do is tell them to fuck off.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it. I hope you’re not right.”

S turned to the dog, who was passed out, exhausted, in his kennel in the back seat. “Sorry about those bastards, Cody,” she said to the dog. “Did you see that, Mom? He NODDED. He IS PISSED at those men.”

And then, suddenly, everything seemed hilarious, and I started laughing and couldn’t stop. And S called my aunt, whom she calls “yiayia,” or grandma in Greek, and she told her everything good there was to say about Pride, including the fact that she had collected 27 condoms, some of them on sticks like lollipops. Apparently yiayia wasn’t as freaked out by this as I assumed she’d be. S said, “I mean, my school doesn’t even TEACH how to use birth control, and that is RIDICULOUS.”

And suddenly, I remembered something big. Last year at Pride, S and I had gotten into an argument about birth control: she said she wanted to get pregnant right out of high school and hoped she would. She also cried when the atheists marched by in the parade, outraged because she didn’t think it was right not to believe in God. Now she’s an atheist herself (or maybe it’s a pagan who believes in lots of gods? It changes a lot, but at least she’s exploring, and accepting of others). When the drag queens marched by last year, she was freaked out; this year, she critiqued their outfits, noting which looked best. And she had a conversation with one of the students working the booth about the decisions transgendered people have to make about whether or not to change their bodies, and I heard her say, “Top surgery is probably painful and seems unnecessary, but I don’t really judge people who do it, because it’s their choice.” I’m pretty sure that last year, she wasn’t really aware of what a transgendered person was, much less what top surgery was.

Anyway. The point is, people DO change. So I said to her, "Remember Pride last year? You were SO upset about the atheists and the drag queens.”

“Don’t bring that UP, Mom. I was a DIFFERENT PERSON then. God!”

Exactly my point.

When I step back and think about the changes S has been through in the last year, there is no way to look at that story without feeling a great deal of hope--even if doing so does not resolve my questions about when and whether to come out and does not erase the pain I felt when confronted by homophobes after such an amazing weekend.

poison ivy

In my last entry I wrote about retreat, and how mine in particular forced me to contend with my rage. The real test of a retreat, though, is how one uses the insights she learned as her life continues. I am doing well. On my first day back, S commented on how I was not getting angry as easily. I am back in control of myself, which means I’m being a better parent—in other words, when S raises her voice or cusses or makes violent or illogical comments, I can correct and give consequences without feeling guilty. Before, consequences seemed a bit crazy since I, too, was losing it on a regular basis. S and I have had multiple talks since my return about what happened to me while I was there. I haven’t told her every detail, but I have shared how my anger had taken over my life, and how I needed to stop being afraid to be angry, but to find ways to let it out without hurting others. I can remind her of how I came to these lessons when she loses control.

But, by Sunday morning, I had a new struggle to contend with--my left eye was swollen shut, and I had a rash all over my body—and I really mean all over. I suspected poison ivy, and the doctor on Monday confirmed I’d had a major allergic reaction to some kind of plant. I had to go on medications (not my favorite thing to do) and have been feeling utterly uncomfortable since then. The healing process is slow; the meds make me drowsy but are necessary to keep swelling and itching down. Even doing simple things like dressing and eating is painful.

It seemed like a kind of brutal lesson to have to take right after returning from a retreat. What was I supposed to make of this? I asked this question on my facebook status update, mostly jokingly, and one of my friends posted, “Did you do something while you were out there to make the goddess mad?” He was joking, too, but I had been wrestling very physically with the goddess. My body was sore from all of the pounding, even though it was counteracted with yoga and walking. The earth accepted my sacrifice of both rage and peace, but there is always a cost for waiting this long. Anger is physical, and getting it out is physical work.

I can’t separate the body from my mind and heart. I have been in the habit of doing so most of my life. Yoga was a way for me, when I started practicing about ten years ago, of bridging the physical and the spiritual, and of reconnecting with my much-neglected body. I knew what felt good to the body in the short term but not always in the long term. In a way, this retreat was also about bringing me back to my body after a long winter of not nearly enough exercise, overeating, and gaining 10 pounds. I needed to feel things in my body again in order to know who I was. Not that I couldn’t have learned these lessons, mind you, without the poison ivy, but my discomfort has forced me to stay in my body and to remember it.

And there is also another, perhaps simpler lesson, here: the fact that there is a limit to the things about my life that I can control. Sure, I could have been a bit more careful, but I was looking out for poison ivy—I do know what it looks like—and it’s possible this is a reaction to another plant I would not have recognized, or that, in some moment of rage, I just plain missed what I was touching. Allergic reactions happen even if a person is careful. So many aspects of our lives are out of our control, and we simply have to pick up the pieces when something difficult happens.

I have mostly handled this experience well, except a couple nights ago. At the end of a particularly long day, I was so exhausted I could feel myself wanting to snap at S. When she refused to get up and clean up her things at 9:30, saying she’d do it later, I was able to stop myself from snapping and to remind her that she needed to do her chores on time. I also told her calmly that I was hurt she hadn’t bothered to help with supper even though I’d asked, especially since doing things like cutting vegetables and mixing dough is difficult for me right now. She blew up at me, even though I’d said these things calmly, but her blow up ended quickly, and she apologized, got up, cleaned up, and we moved on. At the end of the night, I said, “Didn’t I do better that time of telling you how much you had upset me without getting really mad?” She said yes, and said she had noticed, and promised to keep trying to do better, too.

Since that night I am feeling a bit of relief—the itching and swelling are decreasing. Today we leave for a wedding for the weekend, and then a two day meeting for work in the Twin Cities, where we’ll meet S’s college buddy so she has someone to spend time with while I’m working. I keep dreading the idea of putting on a dressy dress and nice shoes, of the long drive, of sitting for two full days in meetings—but I am also recognizing that I can do this; it’s not the end of the world, and I will be OK.

I can’t help but wonder if this is also about my growing interest in disability studies and the fact that I will soon be co-teaching a class on this topic. Obviously, many people are disabled and struggle or need help with cooking, cleaning, bathing, etc. every day for their entire lives. Obviously, the world, or at least the U.S., is designed for these kinds of tasks to be done quickly so that we are able to get to the more important things, whatever they are. Maybe this is also simply a lesson in compassion for others, and recognition of my own privileges—as well as reminder that it is OK to slow down.

On a last note, I haven’ t been doing yoga—bending is just too hard on the rash—but I have been writing daily in my journal, reflecting on each day at its end (rather than writing in the morning, which used to be my practice), and this has been good for me. It’s helped me to recognize frustration and anger, and once, yes, I did need to pound on the pillows and get it out. It’s also helped me to keep track of how well I’ m caring for myself, and I’m back to eating healthier meals and exercising again, even if, for now, that simply involves dog walks with S or going to and from work by foot—it’s a start. I’m just generally much more aware of what I’m feeling, and so I feel much more like a person with a center and a soul, and this is a good thing.

Retreat and Rage

I lie on my stomach on the ground, my fists pounding the earth, my whole body convulsing, picturing violent images I didn’t know could possibly make their way into my mind. I am hurting people I know—even people I love--running them over with my car, or pounding them with my fists, or kicking them in the stomach. The pounding goes on and on as memory after memory from the last year washes over me. My fists swell, my feet ache—I realized I am kicking, too—and my voice grows hoarse from screaming.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. I was on a short retreat. I was supposed to mourn the year’s unresolved grief so that I could get back to being in the present moment. Instead, halfway through, I was on my stomach in the center of a labyrinth that was supposed to be used for silent meditation, pounding and screaming.

This was how I came to understand that working through anger is a spiritual practice as real as prayer, and studying sacred texts, and yoga, and meditation. I’d expected to use my retreat to return to practices that had worked for re-centering before: yoga, journal writing, and being in the natural world. The first thing I did after S and her college buddy drove away was to I spread out my yoga mat. I did the sun salutation, some warrior poses, some deep stretches that reached into the places where I usually hold my grief—places that had been aching and giving out on and off for about a month, the first sign that I desperately needed to take some time for self-care. I expected to cry, but I didn’t; my body felt mildly better after an hour of practice, but I could tell the relief had not reached into the deep places.

Then I opened the journal I’d used only five times since early March. “I came here to deal with whatever it is that is blocking me from being a kind, compassionate person, from doing my work well, from writing, from being a good teacher and friend and most importantly, parent,” I wrote. And then, the next words that came, written, it seemed, by someone else, were, “That something is not grief, it’s RAGE.” Suddenly, I was writing every incident I could remember that had made me angry in the last year, and the list was long—14 pages in my journal, to be exact. And varied: a heated argument that I couldn’t finish because the other party wouldn’t accept either my apology or my plea for a follow-up conversation to address the core issues in our fight. Times my friends had not been there for me when I needed them. The anti-GLBT legislation passed in November, upheld since then. Students who had spent most of the semester texting and facebooking during my class, then complained about their grades. The way S and I had been forced to sign an agreement with her biological mother that we didn’t want to sign. Incident after incident, meeting after meeting, e-mail exchange after e-mail exchange, all relating to my ongoing argument with the schools.

When I got to page 14, I went into the bedroom in the apartment, drew the drapes, and, as if somehow my body had been overtaken by some force outside myself, I began to pound on the pillows on the bed. There couldn’t have been anything more opposite than yoga. I’d never hit pillows in my life—in fact, there have only been a handful of times that I can remember when I acted on my anger physically. I wanted to scream, but I’d vowed to be silent for the duration of my retreat, except for a nightly phone conversation with my daughter. I had stopped being able to control my words, so three days of silence, of simply listening, seemed appropriate.

I went on pounding and pounding until my body couldn’t take anymore. And then, I checked how I felt. Better—much better—but I knew there was more inside of me. The day was getting away from me, though, and I wanted desperately to be outside. I would let my mind do whatever it needed on my hike, and I would go wherever the path led me. I walked quickly, angrily, only vaguely aware of the mosquitoes and the sun seeping through spaces between the leaves; I glanced but didn’t take the time to really see the lake that the path was winding around. Suddenly, I was in an open field, the sun hot on my back. I let myself breathe in deeply, and when I breathed out, the old prayers from my childhood came to me, the order of service repeated four times a day, the Prayer of St. Ephraim, the few psalms and Bible verses and poems I knew by heart. My pace stilled, my heart stilled, and I walked through the field and back into the woods. I kept on praying, not bothering to try to make sense of the words, just letting their rhythm wash over me. Strangely, suddenly, I was standing in front of my apartment door.

Back at the little kitchen table, I read through what I’d written earlier, all 14 pages, and realized that not a single one of my entries had to do with S—that is, she was never the person at whom the anger was directed, though often, I was angry at someone for something they had done or said that had directly or indirectly affected her. I wanted to understand anger better, but the only sources I had (no phone connection, no internet) was my bible and my Unitarian hymnal—the only books I had brought along. The only other book in the apartment was the Methodist hymnal, which didn’t have an index. I looked for anger and rage in the index of the Unitarian hymnal—it offered nothing. Unity, love, the interconnected web of all existence, the environment—there were readings and songs for all of these, but nothing, not a thing, for any of the dark emotions, like anger or jealousy or grief.

So, I reluctantly looked in the index of the Bible, skeptical because, in addition to topics like “anger” and “revenge,” there were subject headings like “paganism” and “homosexuality.” But, I reasoned, I have no other choice, and besides, I can apply critical thinking to what I read. I needed to move into my head and out of my heart, to rest a little, because I couldn’t stay in that raw feeling—but I didn’t want to lose the thread altogether, either. The Bible was all I had.

I started with the listed psalms. I opened first to Psalm 38: 7-9: “My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. “ I wanted to weep, but tears were not accessible yet. I’d come, partly, because my back was truly in searing pain, feeling like it was on fire. Yoga wasn’t going to fix the pain, at least, not alone, I realized. I needed to work through the rage.

Then, I turned to Psalm 4:4: “In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.” I couldn’t help but read this as clear instruction: I’d come here so that my anger would stop controlling me. I needed to deal with things night by night—not year by year. But also, I needed to lie on my bed, pounding, in silence. OK, the verse didn’t say that exactly, but can you blame me for reading into it?

Reluctantly, I went on to the one Old Testament story listed: Cain and Abel. I already know how this ends, I thought, but I remembered that part of the point was not resisting the process. It turned out there was a part of the story I’d forgotten. Cain got mad because his brother’s sacrifice was loved by God more than his own—that part I recalled—but when he gets angry, God says to him, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

And then, Cain goes ahead and kills Abel anyway, because he couldn’t “master it.”

I hadn’t killed anyone, but I knew I wasn’t in control of my anger, and I didn’t want things to get worse. I was getting a clear message that it isn’t the feeling of anger itself that is the problem, but the way the feeling makes a person act—the feeling’s mastery over that person. It’s a simple lesson, to be sure, but I realized that all my life, I’ve been scared shitless of my own anger because I’ve seen what anger, unchecked, can do—I had watched my father tear apart his family and life by giving into rages, over and over again.

There is nothing I fear more, except maybe dying like my mother, than becoming my father. Unchecked anger could, I realized, lead to both outcomes. But the pounding doesn’t hurt anyone, I said out loud. It was the first time since I’d said goodbye to my daughter and her college buddy that I’d spoken. I can feel these feelings without hurting anyone, I said again.

I went on reading. Matthew 5:21-24 had a similar message. It was not the anger itself that was the problem, but the way one handled it. Don’t call others names or decide that they are fools when you are angry, Jesus warned. I realized then how often condescension is how I deal with my anger. When I get angry, I immediately turn it off and try to understand the reasons for the other person’s actions. The problem is, the reasons usually boil down to some kind of condescension: This person can’t be there for me because she’s just not deep enough to go to the hard places; that person can’t educate my daughter because she’s simply not bright enough to understand my daughter’s complicated needs. There is a fine line between compassion and condescension: even if the reasons I choose to explain others’ actions are true (which I can rarely know for sure), I need to be careful. True compassion, true forgiveness, can’t happen if I am harboring anger. That much was clear.

The verse goes on to suggest that we must make amends to those we have hurt before we offer a gift at the altar—but what about making amends to those who have hurt us? And what if they don’t want to admit it, or won’t discuss it? Just this question put me back into a rage, led to more pounding. So much of my anger was about my lack of control—the other person was controlling the situation by only selectively hearing me, or by not responding at all.

There’s no direction for situations like my argument with the school, or with some people I love dearly who won’t continue the conversation, I told myself. I went for another hike, and ended up, eventually, at a small pond, where I sat to continue reading. The parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35) seemed a useless reminder of “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” But on deeper reading, I realized that this story, too, did not go exactly as I remembered it. The master calls a servant to him to demand what he is owed, and the servant begs for more time, which he is granted. Then, that same servant goes out and throws another man in jail for not immediately repaying his debt. The master, when he hears of this, is outraged, and punishes the servant more harshly than he might have in the first place.

The servant’s problem is not that he wants the money owed to him or even that he asks for it, but that he violently punishes the other man. I had been doing the same. I was so angry at some of the people on the list that instead of just continuing to ask for what I needed, or what was legally or rightfully mine (or S’s), I punished them by passive aggressively making them feel stupid or by being cruel or by withholding things from them. The parable calls us to act and speak directly about what we need—and to give people more time. Even the master doesn’t totally forgive his servant all his debt—he simply gives him more time to make it right.

Finally, I moved on to the letters in the New Testament. The instructions to a new church community found in Ephesians 4:25-5:2 note that we must “put off falsehood and speak truthfully,” and that we must “not the sun go down while [we are] still angry.” I used to read this instruction as a call to make amends, to talk it out, and again, I was frustrated by this notion, as doing so is not always possible. The other person may not want to work through the issue before sundown, if ever! But, I realize now that this is not what the instructions say at all—they simply say that the angry person should let go of her anger by the time sun goes down. The instructions noted that holding onto anger “give[s] the devil a foothold.” It was, again, the actions that follow, and not the anger itself, that was of concern. If I needed to get my anger out in a safe way that didn’t hurt others—while, of course, either working toward reconciliation or accepting that such reconciliation can’t happen—then perhaps this was not only OK, but something I needed to do on a daily basis.

I ended that day’s study with James 1:19-27, which reads, in part, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” I prayed, Lord, this is what I want. I want to be able to listen patiently again as I used to do, and to start controlling my anger instead of allowing it to control me. But how can I do this? I let the question hang there, over the reflection pond, and, realizing evening was coming, I went back to the apartment to get something to eat.

After supper, I decided to just give in to the pounding. I would actually plan to pound the pillows—would read what I’d written about a specific person or situation, then go and do my pounding. And I would keep this up until I had pounded out all 14 pages. I realized this was physical work, but that it was also different from brisk hikes or yoga. And also, I knew by then that it was necessary. I got through about 10 specific situations or people that night. I stopped my mind when it backed away from the anger and began to make excuses for the other people, condescending or compassionate. This is just about being in this moment, feeling this anger, I kept telling myself.

When it was over, I was sore. I did some more yoga, showered, and went through both the Greek Orthodox and the Methodist order of service for closing the day. I went to sleep and dreamed nothing. When I woke the next morning at 7, I felt rested for the first time in several months. I got up, did the morning prayer services, Greek Orthodox and Methodist, and did an hour of yoga. Then, I made myself some Greek coffee. Afterwards, I turned my cup over and turned it three times, then tapped it three times, as I’d watched my great-aunt do so many times the summer I lived in Greece about 10 years ago. She had taught me to read the grounds; she said I had a natural affinity for it. One thing I had learned from her is that the grounds rarely tell the future—usually, they give us better clarity about the present, and about what might happen if the present situation continues. We can often change our futures, at least to some extent.

Remembering this, I went for a hike and let the cup sit. I let myself breathe in the clean air, and noticed every change in the path—slight inclines, declines, needle-covered, grassy, and then, the sounds of the birds, more variety, it seemed, than I’d ever heard before. I want to control everything, I thought, and by doing that, I’ve totally lost control. I need to just let myself feel sad and angry about the things that don’t go well, to be in the moment, and then move on. I got a bit lost, but remembered again to trust the path, and again, although I’d started in an entirely different place, and crossed the road twice, the path returned me to my door. Does every single path come back to the beginning? I wondered.

When I returned, I turned over the cup and saw, clear as day, my own body, my hand on my back, and flames consuming me, devouring me. I wanted to weep. I thought I was almost done, but apparently, I was just beginning.

I acknowledged then in prayer that I knew I was causing S harm. I was being outright mean to her, yelling, or saying things I never thought I’d say to a child, much less my child. Nobody saw this, and nobody knew how bad it had gotten in the last month except the two of us and our therapists. They had been helpful, teaching us ideas for ways to react better in the moment, but it seemed that nothing had actually stuck for me. Just when I thought I’d figured out how to stay calm, she’d find a new way to hurt me, and I’d lash back. Or so I thought, but now, looking back, I wasn’t so sure that was how it always happened, and even if it was, it was no excuse. Cruelty and violence are coping mechanisms she’s learned from a life of abuse. She is 15. I’m 38, and I am supposed to be teaching her a better way.

I resolved to keep working. I got through pounding out five more people and situations, then went hiking, then came back to more.

Eventually, I was back at the pond, looking back over everything I’d written and finding themes. I realized my anger boiled down to three general themes: abandonment, jealousy, and righteous anger. All of them connected in some way to both my best and my worst impulses. I can reframe all of these triggers, if I can simply work toward understanding them, I realized.

I was angry at some people for abandoning me or S in some large or small way. Some had completely cut off communication or pulled away when things got hard; some had simply not responded to requests for help. Some had treated S. unfairly in one way or another, making her feel less loved or cared for than others. Some had refused S. the services or help or support she needed—or I needed—and then had tried to convince us there was nothing wrong with what they had done. Others had tried their best but said or done something to show they were not actually able to help.

No matter how the abandonment played out, or whether it was intentional or unintentional, large or small, it connected to the deep wounds of my childhood, when my mother abandoned me through death, and my father, through mental illness and abuse and an inability to be a father. Other adults did their best, but always, I felt that there was a hole in my center—not only the loss of my mother, but the loss of a person who would really see and listen to me consistently. I realized I had started out being that person for S but wasn’t anymore. I also realized that some of the time, when I raged at S, it was because she was treating me in ways that triggered my memory of abandonment—running away (she always returned within an hour), threatening suicide or homicide, saying hurtful or mindless things, not doing what I’d asked of her. It all went back to the same root of abandonment, for both of us, really. Her feelings of abandonment—and her reasons for feeling them—are so much larger and more profound.

I was mad at some people for treating S or me disrespectfully—for either not recognizing our gifts or talents, or not fulfilling their obligations, legal or ethical, to us, or for impeding our ability to grow or move forward. This category was closer to the righteous anger of Jesus when he cleared the temple—a verse I’d purposely ignored in my study because I was worried it would justify my rage. I was fighting for my own, or my daughter’s, right to be treated as a person of worth, and this was noble. Still, again, it was about how I handled this anger, how I treated the person who made me angry, rather than the anger itself, that was the problem, and I realized that now. Even justifiable anger needs to be handled with care. And even this category of anger connected to childhood-- when, if ever, was I treated respectfully, heard, understood, as a child? I can remember moments, but not a coherent narrative of this kind of care. This was a wound from childhood that I had allowed to affect how I treated myself, how hard I worked for things, how confident I was. I didn’t want to pass this on to S.

Everything was getting clearer.

The third category boiled down jealousy. I was mad at some people for not recognizing how much they had, or how much more they could have if they only weren’t so lazy or made better decisions. I thought again about Cain and Abel, and laughed because I had almost refused to read the story, thinking it had nothing to teach me. But when I find myself asking, “how dare so-and-so complain when all he’d have to do is such-and-such and his problems would be solved but he won’t do it,” or “how dare so-and-so not appreciate how much I do for her when her life is so much easier than mine” was not much different than thinking, “But my offering is just as good as his, damn it!” I needed to decide, in each situation, whether the other person truly had something I wanted, and if so, what to do about that—how to focus on setting goals to get what I wanted rather than envying what was not mine. I had to decide why this was any of my business in the first place (often, it wasn’t), or how clearly I was seeing the situation (often, I did not have enough information). What did I need to do to address the problem, if there actually was one? Often, I had a legitimate complaint—some laziness, and some bad decisions, did affect me, but often, I had not voiced my hurt to the person involved, so how could I expect them to know?

I decided to look at verses about jealousy. First, there were the Old Testament stories of God punishing harshly those who were jealous. I didn’t know what to make of these. They seemed to contradict what I’d already learned—that acts of violence due to rage are the problem, and not the rage itself. And then I realized that maybe God, too, has grown over the years (or, depending on one’s theology, our understanding of God had grown over the years), that maybe the Old Testament iterations of God were early versions of a much younger and less-wise being. Maybe that God needed to get directly involved, to talk to people, to punish people, but the older, wiser version had, at some point, backed off and began to trust us more. We have failed, time and again, of course, but we are running the show now, and God can only guide us through what we find in spiritual texts and in our hearts.

In chapter 3, James warned that “if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. “ The first step was simply admitting that one was feeling jealousy. James 3 and 4 and Galatians 5 had lists of antidotes to jealousy, with little help in how to attain these fruits of the spirit, which included self-control. I had to figure out a way to get to these better, more attentive ways of living.

I went back to my room and pounded out each incident or person who fit into the general “jealousy/bitterness” category, and then, after my anger was out, I put each case to the test. I wrote down which cases I simply had to let go, which cases helped me to clearly see goals I needed to set for myself, and which cases required me to be honest and direct about the fact that the other person’s bad decisions or laziness were hurting me. And, in the process, I realized that bad decisions and laziness—as well as directly expressed jealousy--are three of the biggest triggers that start fights between me and my daughter. Jealousy was often a trigger for my father’s rages—another reason it was an emotion I couldn’t comfortably admit I had—and his laziness and bad decisions were two of the causes of many of the problems in my childhood home. Again, I began to see how the triggers had as much, if not more, to do with my childhood than with current situations.

Most of the pounding was done by now, I thought, but I still felt angry. I went on another hike, to take a break from the pounding and the study, and that is when I stumbled on the labyrinth. It had been there all along, hidden in the midst of a field I’d walked before, but somehow, I hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t well marked; there was tall grass scattered everywhere, and lots of winding paths, so it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t recognize the labyrinth for what it was. I had walked labyrinths before, praying rote prayers on the way in, allowing myself to speak from the heart at the center, then praying my gratitude on the way out. I knew the experience was all about trusting the path, knowing that you can’t always see what is coming, can’t control when you’ll reach the center—and also about the delight and relief of finding rest at the heart-place, the whole-place, the center-place, when it is finally, and usually, suddenly encountered.

I expected, when I found the labyrinth, to have a similar experience. But, when I got to the center, the worst rage of all overtook me, and I found myself on the ground, pounding until my fists actually swelled, and, yes, finally, screaming—giving voice to the feelings of abandonment, to everything I had lost. There was no echo. It went on for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, and when I stood up, I knew I was done with the rage; there would be no more pounding, at least, not this weekend.

Sometimes the center you have to come to is not peace or hope or love, but the root of the rage you are feeling, raw and beautiful and real in its own way. Sometimes the realization awaiting you is not related to your capacity for compassion or love, but your capacity for violence—real, murderous violence—and your ability to keep from acting on it, or at least, to keep from continuing to act on it. On the walk out of the labyrinth, I said out loud, “What now?” Was I finished? Maybe I could call my S’s college buddy and ask her to pick me up early. Then I literally heard a voice say, “I can take the pounding. Bring it to me whenever you have it to give. It is your offering.” It was a woman’s voice, and I knew it was the earth herself. I turned around and looked back at the inconspicuous center, where I had, not long ago, thrown myself to the ground. Already I felt like a different person than the woman who had been there. But rage as offering? That seemed…impossible, confusing. How in the world could my rage be an offering?

Later, I would ask myself that question again and, finally, weep and weep in my bed. It was the last night of my retreat, and finally, the tears I thought I would start with came to the surface. I realized that is all God, the earth, the universe had ever wanted from me was to walk bravely into the heart of the anger, and then walk out, so I could see clearly what its triggers were, so I could confront the deep pain in my life, so I could, yes, make anger a spiritual path, as real as prayer and yoga and all the others that, over the years, I have tried. Anger was my way in to humility—I could no longer pretend not to understand violence—and also my way into compassion—I could no longer choose to ignore what I was doing to myself and to others. It was my way of finding a balance between trying to control too much and having adequate control over myself. If I would let it, it would teach me to listen more carefully to what I needed; it would remind me when I had wandered too far from the present, when I was living in fear of the future or rage over the path. It could help me determine what to do next, and when to stop thinking about what to do next.

It felt good to finally weep. In the evening prayer service, when I got to the prayers of the people, I found myself finally able to pray for all of those who had hurt me. My heart widened to all I loved, all who were suffering, all who were surviving, all who had blessed my daughter and I so deeply that I couldn’t imagine being angry at them. My heart even enveloped those that had hurt me, and I began to feel real understanding, not condescension, for them—and, yes, to finally forgive. I felt, finally, whole again.

I read, just before falling asleep, the beautiful words in Isaiah 55:10-13: “The rain and the snow come down from heaven. They do not return to heaven without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. In the same way, my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” I remembered, again, the insight from earlier that day that God was expecting us to live out the word rather than speaking directly to us, that God knew we were capable of that kind of honor, that kind of responsibility. Since so much of my rage was about not being honored, not being treated as a whole person, I was comforted. But the verse goes on, “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briars the myrtle will grow.”

The next morning, I went through my morning ritual again: services, yoga. I made Greek coffee, drank it, turned over the cup. I had not planned to do anything more, just to wait for my daughter and her college buddy to come back and get me. Absentmindedly, I opened the Unitarian hymnal, which I had abandoned completely when it couldn’t take me to the dark places. I opened to a poem by Mary Oliver that begins, “Every morning the world is created,” and includes these lines, which had new meaning to me, though the poem was familiar: “And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead—if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging—There is still somewhere within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted.”

After reading those words, I decided I needed to end my retreat by going back to the labyrinth, by thanking the earth for accepting my offering of rage. But first, I wanted to walk the wooded path I loved most, which conveniently ended, if I could remember the right turns, at the field where the labyrinth was. On the way in, I allowed my mind to totally empty, and tried to be, as much as possible, in the present moment. It had been so long since such attention had been possible; the rage had clouded everything, including my ability to see. I listened and looked and suddenly, before me, was a small piece of bark that seemed to be shaped like a bird with an offering of peace in its mouth. I picked it up, intending to take it home with me as a reminder of what had happened here.

When I got to the labyrinth, I sang the chorus of the hymn “Here I am, Lord,” on the way in: “Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. If you lead me, I will follow, I will hold your people in my heart.” As I was singing, I became aware that there were purple flowers everywhere. I thought at first that maybe I just hadn’t noticed them, but no, I remembered, on my way in, before my final, deepest rage, how I’d been somewhat disappointed by the weedy, brown grasses surrounding the labyrinth, had wanted to see color. Somehow, overnight, flowers that were so tightly budded I hadn’t seen them had opened. This was a gift from the earth, and I breathed it in.

At the center, I spontaneously placed the bark that looked like the bird of peace over the place I had beaten with my rage. Please accept this offering as you accepted my rage, I said out loud, and I felt my heart swelling again, open. I walked out, mind empty, aware of everything my senses could experience about this place. On the walk through the woods on the way back to my apartment, I noticed more flowers, lupine and columbine, purple everywhere. I’d seen these before, but they didn’t seem so beautiful yesterday. I felt an ache. I was missing my daughter. I love her so much, I said out loud.

When I got back to the cabin, just before packing, I turned over the cup and there I was, in the fire, though the flames were around my ankles now, not above my head. I felt my heart sink a little—the fire is not gone, I thought—but then I noticed that there were tall, thin, lovely trees surrounding me in every direction, and that I was stomping out the fire. I can come back here when I need to do so, I thought, perhaps physically, perhaps more often. But when I cannot be here physically, then I can still come to this place in my body. I can remember the pounding or find a quiet place to pound. I can remember the woods, the tall, graceful trees, the needled path, the open space of the field, the purple flowers dotting the path. I can remember the offerings I gave at the center of the labyrinth, how they were, in the end, “exactly what I needed.”

Ascension and Pentacost

This Sunday, I'll sing Christos Anesti, the Easter song, for the last time this year. In the Greek Orthodox tradition, it's Ascension Sunday; in the Western tradition, Pentacost.

You probably remember this part of the story: Jesus dies, the earth shakes, some rich guy offers to provide a new grave for his body, which is carefully guarded. A bunch of faithful women discover that his body is not there and hear the angel explain that he’s risen, as he said he would. They are overjoyed or full of fear, depending on which version you read, but either way, they run off and tell others, who tell others, who tell others, and the church, as we know it, with all of its flaws, is born.

And that's where the story of Jesus' life on earth would end it wasn’t for the Book of Acts (and the tail end of a couple of the Gospels). After the Resurrection, Jesus returns to walk among his followers, who sometimes recognize him and sometimes don’t? He finally ascends to heaven “for real” 40 days later in front of their eyes? Then, the 120 followers who have been hiding out decide to cast lots to replace Judas? (I always feel sorry for the guy who didn’t get chosen—I mean, why was it so important to have 12, or, for that matter, that they all be men?).

If the Ascension story wasn’t weird enough, there’s Pentecost, which is even more farfetched—the Holy Spirit comes down, everyone speaks ecstatically in tongues, and Peter tells off the mean people who think they’re all drunk, explaining that they’re actually filled with a spirit non-believers will never understand.

Already, lines are being drawn between who matters and who doesn’t, who gets left out and who gets let in. Already, Jesus’ message of inclusiveness seems to have been forgotten. Yeah, yeah, I get it—they were hiding out for a reason. They really were in danger—I mean, he’d just been crucified. Still, I can’t help but feel it’s odd that the same method used to split up Jesus’ clothes among the soldiers after he was stripped for a whipping was used to determine who would replace Judas as the 12th Disciple.

But more than anything else, I think my writer-self is just bothered by the way the Ascension and Pentecost mess with what would otherwise be a beautiful and neatly tied up story of Jesus’ birth, life, and Resurrection.

But I suppose that’s the whole point. No one’s life story reflects a perfect narrative arc. I talked about this with my Creative Nonfiction students this semester. So many of them were confused about where to end their pieces—a challenge for any creative piece, but especially challenging for autobiographical work. Of course it’s important to reflect the messiness of life, but the piece can’t be such a big mess that it has no center. Storytelling is, after all, about making meaning out of experience, either actually, when using the material of our own lives, or figuratively, when using the material of our shared humanity.

I come from a tradition that believes the Bible to be the word of God. God, like a divine lot-thrower, made sure that, out of all the versions that were written down, the right versions got into the book. God also inspired the writers to put down what they knew, to tell the story in the best way.

As a literate and thinking person, I can’t actually believe this; there is simply no way to discount how the Bible was actually put together, and the historical and political reasons certain versions were chosen over others. Not to mention that if God had really controlled the writing and putting together of the Bible, why do we have four vastly different versions of Jesus’ life? Yes, each writer had a different perspective or way of understanding Jesus, but even aside from those personal differences, the fact remains that even basic facts about what happened when, what Jesus said and didn’t say, conflict. To say that those who hunger and thirst will be blessed is vastly different than saying that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be blessed—and yet, the Sermon on the Mount, one of my favorite set of verses in the Bible, is completely different depending on which version you read. I don’t get how the Evangelicals—or the Greek Orthodox, for that matter, so I don’t pick on any one group--can’t see this. It’s so incredibly obvious, even on a first read.

In his final portfolio reflection, one of my students wrote that he continued to be bothered by the fact that I’d told my students it was OK to lie in their creative nonfiction pieces. That’s not exactly how I put it, but essentially, he’s right. I don’t believe it’s OK to completely alter what happened when writing nonfiction, but if you need to combine minor characters, or write a dialogue even though you don’t remember the exact words that were said—if doing so will make the story better, and make the reader’s experience of reading better—then I believe it’s OK. Good writing requires details that even the most observant person, even the best listener, won’t get right. The alternative, to me, would be to never write anything autobiographical at all or to write really boring, summarized pieces that didn’t read like—well, like good writing.

Did the writers of the Bible know that their words were going to be studied and prayed over and believed to be the word of God? I doubt it, but then, I also don’t believe Jesus had any real understanding that he was special (something that also does not coincide with my tradition’s view of Christianity). I think he was a brave, thoughtful guy who got in trouble with the people in power for speaking against them a little too often, for telling the truth. I believe he healed people, and spoke wisely and honestly, and loved deeply, and knew he would eventually die for what he said and did. Was he God’s one and only special son? I don’t know for sure, but I do believe his teachings are worth reading carefully and considering thoughtfully, and I do use them as the basis for my own spiritual practices.

But I also think that the telling of stories mucks up the truth as much as it preserves truth. We have to tell our stories to make sense of them, to make connections with others. But what we tell and what we lived are two vastly different things, and we can’t pretend that one is the same as the other. What I know about who I was at 10, 15, or 25 is different than what I experienced then and different than what I wrote in my journal soon after I’d lived the events of those periods in my life. That’s just how life, and recording life, work.

Some traditions tell us that the Church is the keeper of truth, and others tell us that the Church is ever-changing, based on the love and lives and actions of its members. I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. There are traditions worth keeping—the core messages Jesus meant to pass on, about love and inclusiveness and generosity and healing. There are changes worth making to traditions to meet the needs of an ever-changing world, but of course those needs remain, on some level, the same—there are still people who are left out, considered untouchable; there are still people who don’t have enough to eat and who are sick; there are still people who enjoy having power over others and people who are empowered by community and a desire for change.

In the end, the writer can only do so much. The reader will meet the writer only part way, will make sense of every story she reads in light of her own understanding and education and beliefs. And, a reader will read the same text at different times in her life and find different meanings. There is no such thing as objectivity; we all come to the page not as fully realized selves, but as selves that are ever changing.

But maybe that’s the point of the Ascension and the Pentecost stories. They tell us that the story doesn’t end after the Resurrection. They assure us that the boundary between the living and the dead is not as clear as we might have thought, that no story is ever completely over. This is a comfort to me in a way that the idea of heaven has never been. I believe for sure that people live on in those who are left to tell their stories, to pass on some essence of who they were. I don’t know if I believe in a heaven per se, but I do believe in legacies, in stories told, retold, and even mistold in ways that are far better and more meaningful than a simple recounting of what actually happened.

If I had to summarize what my religion is in five words or fewer: I believe in the power of stories. Oops, that’s seven, but that will have to do.

Too Young, Too Old

A woman I knew, five years younger than me, died this weekend. I can’t really call her a friend, though I’ve known her since I moved here nine years ago—at her funeral, I realized she is one of the few people who has been a constant in my life for all nine of those years, someone who truly seems to me to embody this place, perhaps because I’ve known her in a number of different contexts.

During my first couple years here, she was an activity aide at the nursing home where I ran my service-learning project. She stood out because she was always joking with the elders, finding some way to both poke fun at them and with them-- she seemed to love her job. I was also a frequent patron at some of the bars in town around that time, and we would often run into each other, have a couple drinks—though for the life of me I can’t remember a single thing we actually said to each other. Later, she was a student involved in service-learning classes and in feminist work on campus, juggling a family life that included six kids, a recent cancer diagnosis, and her schoolwork. Always, she and her husband were connected to students I knew and loved; those students became alums, and moved away, but she and her family stayed. And now, four years after her battle with cancer started, she is gone.

I am not sure how to make sense of this loss. I can remember her out at the bar, dancing like crazy. I can remember her walking down the street, her children trailing her, the oldest daughter her spitting image, a baby in her arms—and how she walked so tall and confident, even in all of that chaos. I remember her interviewing me for a feminist project on campus, how she seemed, then, too, confident even though she was never the best student. I walked with her and two of her daughters two years ago at Relay for Life; she was strong then, her hair growing out, and she looked glowing and beautiful. I dropped off food for the family a couple times, which she received with a characteristic smile, but I never lingered. I never, ever dreamed she would die.

I have memories, too, that couldn’t actually have happened. I remember her pressing one of her children into my arms, but I’m fairly certain I never held any of them when they were babies. I remember her walking across the stage at graduation, wearing a pink bandana—but she didn’t finish her degree, so I know this couldn’t have really happened. It’s strange how the mind plays tricks on us, confuses us—perhaps wants to comfort us with knowledge or hope that wasn’t really there.

We went to some of the same parties, some of the same events, drank together occasionally over the years—but in short, I didn’t know her, not really. Still, some alumni who were helping to plan her memorial needed a place to work on the program and do some other planning for the memorial, and I ended up being available and spending the day with them. I felt honored to be able to play a role, however small.

The service was simply a time for people to share memories. There were so many stories. At one point, Her husband and an older relative got out their guitars, and then there was dancing—most poignant of all was her daughter, about the age I was when I lost my mother in my early teens, dancing with the same passion her mother used to show on the dance floor, a ribbon of bells around her ankle. I wondered if it was the same ribbon her mother had always worn.

When a young person dies and leaves children behind, or when somebody who seems to embody the town in which you live in a way that few others do passes away—it is impossible not to feel sad, confused. As one of my friends put it, “After this, how can you possibly believe in God?” But I do. Watching her daughter dance, I knew there was a Spirit among us who perhaps couldn’t have saved her, but could comfort everybody now.

I want to believe that things happen for a reason, to fall into a simplistic faith, but I can’t. Some things do seem to happen for a reason—S coming into my life, for instance, or her brother, who will soon be adopted, finding his father, or my ending up in the middle of nowhere in a state whose name I didn’t know, prior to moving here, how to spell, where I am clearly meant to be. But other things—this woman’s death, a student’s recent suicide—they don’t make sense, can’t possibly. And I am OK, now, with recognizing that I will never understand the mystery.

It is easy, too, after something like this happens, to wish there was more I could have done, to want to change the story. I wish, for instance, that I’d lingered a bit when taking the family food instead of rushing away out of a fear that I would be intruding. I wish that I’d taken them food more often. I wish I’d called when she wasn’t able to keep coming to classes to see if there was some way she could, despite her illness, finish her degree. I wish I’d gotten to know her children so that they would feel they could talk to me now—I know what they are going through because of my own mother-loss at their age, but there is no way to connect with them now because I didn’t earlier.

But these regrets are useless, and in some ways, they probably are based in ego rather than love. Who is to say that I could have helped them, or that what I didn’t do wasn’t done by someone else, maybe someone closer to them or someone better at doing whatever was needed than I would have been? Who is to say that the children don’t have plenty of people to talk to, people who truly knew their mother? And yet, as I write this, I wonder what is the bigger sin (for lack of a better word)—that I want now to excuse myself for what I didn’t do, that I didn’t do it in the first place, or that I think I could have been that necessary to the lives of people I don’t know well?

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to live in this community because of our community’s many recent tragedies. After nine years, I’m at least familiar with most of the family names, and can recognize many, if not most, faces. A little girl who needs a liver transplant is the daughter of a student I had in my first year of teaching. Since then, I have worked with her grandmother in two different capacities in my role as service-learning coordinator. The student who died recently was the brother of one of my former students and friends with many students I have now, though I didn’t know him. A woman who died because she was too drunk to get safely home on a cold winter night lived nearby; we saw each other frequently, and I could point out the house she’d lived in, but I’d never learned her name. It is impossible not to think that there must be more that could have been, or can be, done for suffering people, especially in a community this small.

My daughter has made a list of all the ways she plans to raise money for the little girl who needs a liver. Will she follow through on this list? I don’t know, but I do admire her willingness to help someone she doesn’t know, and I hope I will be able to help her do at least some of the things she’s planning.

“I get that from you, Mom,” she said when I praised her for wanting to help. I’d just gotten back from the funeral, and we were finishing supper.

I’d only been half-listening as she read the list to me—my mind was still on the teenage girl who had danced at her mother’s funeral, on the beauty of that simple decision--and immediately, I felt guilty for not paying more attention. “Sometimes, though, I don’t feel like I help enough,” I confessed to her.

“You do what you can, and when you don’t, you just have to forgive yourself,” she said.

“How old are you?” I asked her.

“Fifteen. Why?”

“Just checking.”

“Was that something too young or too old for me to say?” she asked, genuinely confused.

“Too old, you dufus.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back, and then we began to do the dishes without talking about it—me washing, her drying, the chore she hates the most and does least willingly.

“Did you notice anything, Mom?”

“Yeah, you’re not complaining about your chore.”

“That’s right. I’m not. That’s older than my age, too, isn’t it, mom?”

I nodded. It was going to be a good night.

Honesty

Note: I wrote this about two weeks ago, but I’m just getting around to posting it.

Before S, my house (and my phone line) were safe spaces for people to come and talk about nearly anything. Although my life has changed significantly, I still have phone and in person conversations when S is in the vicinity that she probably shouldn’t hear. She understands this, but doesn’t always remember not to repeat what she knows. Finally, after some talk about this in our family counseling, we have managed to figure out how much she should know about other people’s lives and how to set up boundaries.

There is also the question about my own past and our family’s history. What should and shouldn’t she be told, for instance, about what kind of father my father was? About my dating history? These issues are a little less sticky, as I have decided honesty is, in general, the best policy here. I don’t have to tell every detail, but it’s important for S to have some sense of the history that she would have either lived through with me or learned piecemeal over several years if she’ d been my birth child. The basic facts are necessary, and some details come in handy when she is assuming I can’t possibly understand something she is dealing with.

What I didn’t realize until last week that I was holding back from S was how hard it is sometimes to be her mother. In the past month, she has gotten lazy about getting up on time. When we started homeschooling for the first two periods of every day, we agreed (and I told my supervisors) that I would go over what she would be doing the night before, and she would work quietly in my office from 8-10 each morning. I would be available to help her, and on some days she would definitely need more hands-on help than others, but most of the review of her work and the instruction would happen in the evening. Lately, getting her out of bed has been a struggle, and nothing has worked. Even when she is up on time, she’s rarely fully ready to go by 8. I have as a result fallen further and further behind on my work, which has led to late nights, less sleep, and a decreased ability to stay calm.

She’s also begun to get more verbally and physically abusive—so much so that it is not realistic for her to get consequences each time she cusses at me, for instance, or even each time she lashes out physically. The consequences I’d used in the past aren’t working. In short, I realized recently that things were really falling apart, but I think I was so tired I couldn’t see just how much.

A couple days ago, things came to a head. I screamed at her in the morning, something I work hard not to do, telling her I couldn’t take it any more, I needed to get to work at 8, I needed more sleep but couldn’t get it if she didn’t fulfill her part of the deal and allow me to get to work on time, etc., etc. She said she was sorry and promised to get up on time for the rest of the week. We set up a reward she would receive at the end of the week if she did so. The next morning, when I asked her for about the seventh time to get up, she called me a bitch.

I decided to just leave at 8. It was the best possible thing I could have done. I was angry, and I didn’t want to yell at her. I’d tried waiting in the car for her; I’d tried going into her room and doing silly things like jumping on her bed. I decided the best plan was just to go to work, do my work, and let her deal with her own morning routine. I returned to take her to school. She was quiet, and had managed to get through her routine, but she was also reading a horse book instead of studying for her test or doing her English. I calmly told her that I was glad that she was up and ready but that, again, she hadn’t completed her English or her study hall work. I was going to have to give her an incomplete for English, and she would have to make up the time she had missed because of sleeping in. She apologized, and seemed sorry on the drive the school (i.e., uncharacteristically thoughtful and quiet).

That night, on the two hour drive to see her counselor, I said I thought she should talk to her about her behavior and how she could be more respectful of me. She mostly ignored my comment. When she came out of her session, she said she had some things to tell me. First on the list was how bad it had felt for her to be yelled at a couple days earlier. Second, she told me she needed to also explain that this time of year was hard for her because of some abuse memories. We talked briefly about both of these things, and then I heard myself saying, “I’m sorry this is a hard time of year for you, but now I have to tell you something.”

I went on to explain how hurtful it was to be physically and verbally abused. I got tears in my eyes. I explained that I really felt we couldn’t go on like this. It was too painful for me to get so little respect from her. I said that I needed to be able to get more work done in the mornings and that I couldn’t do so because of her refusal to take seriously my need to be at work at 8. I pointed out that this also was selfish and disrespectful. “I never envisioned being the kind of parent who yells at her kid, but I seriously can’t cope,” I said.

“So it’s all my fault?”

“No, I should be able to control my temper. But I will tell you it would be a lot easier if you weren’t so mean to me and if you were more respectful. Also, if I had more sleep, I would be more in control of my temper.”

“I still feel like you’re saying it’s all my fault,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’m saying it really, really hurts me when you call me names. You can’t just do that and think it won’t affect me. And I’m saying it really, really makes me feel disrespected when you won’t bother to get up so that I can be at work on time. If I had any other kind of job, I would have been fired by now for not showing up on time, but the consequence for the kind of job I have is that I have to be up late making up the work. You don’t seem to care how this is affecting me.”

“Why haven’t you told me this before?” she asked.

“Your social workers warned me about this. They told me you’d try to break me down as soon as I finally got you to make some progress. They said you manipulated all your foster parents into giving up on you.” At this point, my voice broke. “But I’m not going to give up on you. No matter how much it hurts and how hard you make my life, I’m not going to give up. But I wish you would stop trying to get power over me. They told me I should never let you know how hard it really is to be abused by you because as soon as I did, you’d have all the power. And now I guess I’m giving it to you. I don’t know what else to do.”

There was a long silence. “The social workers didn’t really know me,” S said finally.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I think they might have been right about this. I think you’re terrified about the fact that I expect you to have a future and you have no idea how to treat me, so you’re pushing me away.”

“I don’t want to be the kind of person who hurts other people,” S said, starting to cry.

“Then stop doing it,” I said, firmly, gaining control of my own tears. “Just stop doing it.”

Of course, I know it’s not that simple. She can’t wake up one morning and stop resorting to “bitch,” “fuck you,” “go to hell,” “I want to kill you and myself.” She can’t just suddenly stop using violence to deal with her anger. But at least now there is an awareness and a willingness to work on changing her behavior.

Then she added, incredibly maturely, “I mean, I need to know these things, Mom. I never have any idea how you’re feeling. We have to be honest with each other if there’s going to be any trust.”

Duh.

The next day, the morning went swimmingly. She got up, did her morning chores, got ready by 8. She worked quietly in the morning. We wrote up a plan to make up the missed English classes, and she agreed to it. On our dog walk that afternoon, we processed how well the day had gone and why.

“I finally feel like all the tension’s gone between us, because now I know why you’re upset. It’s not because of what I’m doing, it’s because of how what I’m doing hurts you.”

This seemed so odd to me. How could she not realize that being called a bitch, being told to fuck off, being kicked or slapped, hurt me? And then she answered the question before I could even ask it. “Everything I do and say seems normal because I don’t know any other way. And nobody’s ever told me that what I do and say matters to them.”

“We’re a family,” I said. “You’re not just using my house as a place to sleep at night. Of course everything you do and say affects me.”

“I know you want me to have a future,” she said. “I know that’s different than the people from before.”

We got to the house of a daycare provider we know well. The children ran toward us, kneeling down to play with the dog. It’s finally really spring, I thought to myself. I’d missed the long walks, missed seeing our neighbors, missed the talks that happened naturally as we were walking. I thought briefly, as I often do, of how things could have been different for S if she hadn’t had the childhood she had, about what it would have been like to have had her since birth. I thought about how she might have been among children like these, whose parents love them, who are with a gentle, kind woman for much of the day. And then I thought of what a miracle it was that I have S now, that we’re talking again instead of bickering, that the day unfolded with sun and tulips and budding trees and after the longest winter I can remember, we were walking around in short sleeves.

Maybe this was part of the problem, too—it is harder to schedule time to talk when there aren’t natural opportunities. We were at least a little out of practice. Even our two hour drives each way to and from her counselor’s hadn’t been as fruitful as they usually were. The wind, the cold, the endless snow and sleet and bad weather, had somehow made us tired and lazy. We needed to keep working at it. I’d been so focused on fixing things at the school—after several more problems with her IEP, finally switching caseworkers for next year, and then dealing with the fallout that happened as a result—and we’d been so focused in family therapy on talking about the school issues—that we’d forgotten to talk about the big things, like what it meant to be a family, like how important trust is to building one.

Tribute to Deborah Digges, and Fear, and Sweeping

Note: This was written three weeks ago; I am just getting around to posting.

Each time my life seems to settle into a rhythm, something changes again.

Right after writing that, I said out loud, “What am I talking about?” My life, truth be told, has always been chaotic. I think maybe I welcome this chaos, even if I don’t choose it exactly. Or maybe I do choose it. I chose, after all, to take S into my life; I chose to leave my partner of six years; I chose to move to a small town in the middle of nowhere and to make a home here. Each choice has meant leaving behind, starting over. Each choice has irrevocably changed me.

Sometimes I imagine moments in my life when I could have chosen differently. Not gone to the college I chose. (I might not have become a writer, or a teacher, or a person who cares about the world beyond herself). Not moved to Cincinnati to work in publishing. (I might not have finally come out). Not kissed the woman I would spend three years loving and hating—the worst relationship of my life. (I would have suffered less, but also known less). Taken the other job, closer to my graduate school home in Arizona. (I can’t even imagine what staying in Arizona would have meant, can’t imagine myself not living and loving and learning here). Not left my partner three years ago (I wouldn’t have S).

There’s nothing profound about this—our lives are a series of choices, and everybody can look back at the decisions they made and wonder, “what if…”. But I am lucky enough to not have any regrets. I wonder how many people can say that. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve made plenty of stupid mistakes. I have hurt myself and other people plenty of times. But I’ve learned from all of these situations, and I feel lucky.

A few months ago, I was convinced I was losing my job. All the signs were there: the university was facing a major financial crisis, and I am in the most vulnerable class of workers, not tenure-track, and also not unionized. And, over the last couple months, I’ve watched plenty of people lose their jobs. A friend has worked closely with me for nine years; two weeks ago, she learned she had won one of the university’s highest honors, and last week, she received a layoff letter. We sat together at the faculty/staff dinner, and I watched her get her award, then followed her out into the hallway and wept with her when she couldn’t hold it together. Later, a group of us went out and had a few too many drinks, talking about the unfairness of it all.

In the meantime (as I mentioned in last post), I’ve learned that I’m not going to be fired, but that my job will change—I’ll go down to teaching one class a year and administrating an office that combines my current halftime job as service-learning coordinator with other work related to outreach. At first, I was sad—being a teacher is so central to my identity that I can’t imagine not teaching—but since then, I’ve come to see this change as an opportunity to build something new from the foundation of the current program I coordinate, to rededicate myself to what I consider to be the center of my life and work, the triad that started this blog in the first place: writing, spirituality, and social justice. Also, truth be told, I am getting burned out on teaching, finding myself more irritated with my students than I’ve ever been before, tired of planning lessons and grading. I think the change will be good for me (and my students) in the long run. And although my work may involve more evening and weekend commitments, they are the kinds of commitments in which I can involve S, whereas grading papers until 3 a.m., as I was doing last night, separates me from her rather than helping her to grow.

It is hard, though, to be happy and grateful when people I love are losing their jobs. I can’t fathom how it would have felt if my trip to the dean’s office had had a different outcome—if I’d been told I was getting laid off rather than that I was getting a new opportunity (even if that opportunity does not come with a raise).

The woman I know well said to me the day after she’d heard the news of her layoff, while weeping, “I know deep down inside that when one door closes, another one opens.” It sounds simplistic, and yet it is so true. I think about how devastated I was the first time I got close to getting a book published but didn’t. The experience made me rethink what would really make me happy, what I really wanted. I think about how sad I was when I didn’t get a job I really wanted a year before I got this one—I never would have ended up here. And the kids I’d inquired about before S came into my life, the ones for whom other families were chosen? They weren’t my kids. It’s that simple. S was meant to be mine.

This week S and I had our biggest fight to date, and she physically hurt me for the first time. I didn’t fight back, didn’t touch her, and I know that because of this I have kept her trust. But I’ve grown more wary of her moods; frankly, for the first time, I’m afraid of her. I spent the week trying to make sense of this fear, and doing so has made me look closely at the nature of fear itself.

I was afraid I wouldn’t have a job, and now, I’m afraid of failing at this new one, of not making myself valuable, of losing my job the next time around. More to the point, I am worried that whatever I do won’t be enough, that people will look back at it years from now and think it didn’t really matter. And, of course, I worry about S’s future—she’s backsliding after so many months of progress. I am afraid of what the future holds.

But maybe fear is not meant to be avoided. Maybe it’s also not meant to be fought. Maybe we’re supposed to live inside it, to let it teach us a new way to see.
Deborah Digges, a poet whose work I love, wrote in her poem “Late Summer,”

Mercy’s at best approximate,
like the first weeks of blindness
before the other senses’ stunned quartet have learned to translate
inside the skull’s black paradise
some recovery of touch, this odor of apples, sea-wind,
hearth-fire, this prophesy
of rain or danger,
this autumn or spring dryness in the leaves.

Deborah Digges must have stumbled around a lot, as I have, to have written these words. She must have also understood that stumbling can lead to translation, to a new way of understanding—she knew fear, and perhaps more importantly, knew how wonder and fear could coexist.

I can’t write this, though, without also mentioning that Digges killed herself recently. I can’t understand it, but then, I didn’t know her, only her work. She was a visionary, though, and it is sad to me that someone who can make words come to life the way she did would want to die. I wonder about this, what makes some people strong enough to live in the “first weeks of blindness,” hoping there will be “some recovery,” and what makes others stumble, never learning to live with their own fear, expecting some kind of salvation that is not possible or real, not realizing that “mercy is at best approximate.”

The longer I live, the clearer it becomes to me that fear is always with us, holding on tightly enough to keep us safe—we need to know our own limits, to understand our own vulnerabilities and frailties. But fear grips harder on some than others, warping words, actions and thoughts. The outcomes of fear, its effects on one’s life, reflect one’s life circumstances, and maybe also some genetic predisposition for survival.

As I stumble through these last two busy weeks of the semester, this start of my third year as a single person and my second year as S’s mom. It is almost summer. Most of my seeds have sprouted and are waiting patiently in my enclosed front porch to be put into the ground.

Digges wrote,

Once I asked myself, when was I happy?
I was looking at a February sky.
When did the light hold me and I didn’t struggle?
And it came to me, an image
of myself in a doorway, a broom in my hand,
sweeping out beach sand, salt, soot,
pollen and pine needles, the last December leaves,
and mud wasps, moths, flies crushed to wafers,
and spring’s first seed husks,
and then the final tufts like down, and red bud petals
like autumn leaves—so many petals…

Even now, I am sanest when I can take the long view, backwards or forwards. Maybe happiness isn’t real except in the whole narrative of our lives, which we understand only from a distance. Later in the poem, Digges goes on,

And so the broom became
an oar that parted waters, raft-keel and mast, or twirled
around and around on the back lawn,
a sort of compass through whose blurred counter-motion
the woods became a gathering of brooms,
onlooking or ancestral…
gone in motion, back and forth, sweeping.

Easter

Greek Easter is over now, and for the third year running, I haven’t made it up to the Twin Cities (where the closest Greek Orthodox Church is) to celebrate Holy Week. I miss everything about it, from fasting to the beautiful services to the Easter vigil and passing of the Easter light. But, going to the Twin Cities was lonely in its own way—I don’t know the Greeks there, have no connection to the place. I miss my family, more so at this time of year than any other. Still, from the beginning of my coming out process in college—and the beginning, too, of my becoming a critical thinker whose beliefs shifted dramatically—I have felt equally comforted and ill at ease when surrounded by the iconography of my youth.

This year, I decided to have people over for Greek food and socializing, and I had a steady stream from 5:00 until 9:30, with waves of young families early on and college students at the end of the night. It was good to remember that even if I’ve had to give up some of my rituals (though I still read through all the Holy Week services, and lit a candle at midnight and sang Christos Anesti), I live in a community full of love.

Love is a ritual of its own. This has been clear to me in the times of my life when I had a partner, but sometimes, as a single person, it has not been nearly as clear. But parenting is full of ritual—the daily routine, the reoccurring challenges, the spurts of growth—not totally predictable, and certainly not controllable, but lovely and spiritual nonetheless. The rituals of being with people I love, eating together, of telling stories, or being present with each other, of sharing wine—all of these sustained me on Sunday, possibly more deeply than church did in earlier periods of my life.

At the end of the night, surrounded by mostly college seniors, I was also reminded of how much my life changes each year, and how this was true even before S. came into my life. I have seen so many generations of college students enter and leave now, and this summer, I will officiate at one wedding of former students and attend two others. I get a little nostalgic, and sad, at this time of year, but I also feel this incredible sense of hope and possibility. These students are ready for challenge and for deep reflection. They are thoughtful and idealistic at the same time.

Another reason for hope: I will have a job next year. I will be coordinating a program with responsibilities much wider than the current program, and will go down to teaching only one class/year. This is a budget savings technique, and it’s hard not to feel guilty that I’ve fared so much better than so many of my colleagues—I’ll be saying goodbye to many good people who have worked as hard as I have, but simply haven’t been as lucky. In contrast, I’ll make exactly what I make now, and I’ll have about the same amount of work.

But it is also an exciting time; I get to build a team of students and community partners who can help usher the program through a major transition and can reflect on what we’ve done and plan for the future. There is nothing more hopeful than the opportunity to reflect, learn from the past, move into the future—and Easter, and my life in general right now, seems to be a remind of just this truth.