Random thoughts while contempleting snow and loss

I've spent the last two days in Florida. Yesterday, I went through pictures and scanned a few. I'm struck by how often my father and his cousins and their parents gathered for family gatherings and parties. There were also tons of pictures from family vacations.

This lead me to a conversation I had on-line with a friend last night. I mentioned that my family took only three family vacations, along with a handful of short weekend trips. He mentioned that is wasn't really unusual to look back at this moment in my life and maybe look for some truth or to even question my own memory. I responded that I am far more interested in looking for the present truth.

That sounds mildly profound, but also pretentious. Does it have any meaning?

In this time of sorrow, I find myself missing my son, my friends, and the snow. I'm missing out on a collective experience, a memory that they'll share. Here, we've been sitting around my mom's house, staring at the television, clearing bookshelves, closets. My dad has been cremated, so there's no funeral. It's the bustle in the house that Emily Dickinson writes about. This is an odd feeling. I expected something different. I don't know what I expected. What truth do I derive out of this?

Looking at the pictures, examining the hundreds of recipes that my father typed up for me, and parsing my feelings, I am going to take away the truth that I want my house full of people for dinners, games, and laughs. I want my gas tank full of gas, and train/plane tickets in my hand to see the world. These are the truths from the past that I want to drive my present. I want bright, vivid memories, for myself and Andrew. So far, I haven't done such a good job. I'll have to try harder.

Out of the shadows

Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend who is also going through a divorce. Like us, she and her husband have not yet told their son, but unlike us, have told their parents. I have told my friends, while her husband has requested that they not tell anyone yet. They are using a mediator, and we will very soon start that process. It felt good to share with someone whose situation is very similar to my own. Toward the end of our chat, she said that she really admired how I was living my life in such an open manner. I've not hidden my pending divorce. I've quietly changed my FB status to "separated" and, of course, it is now a topic open for discussion here. I hadn't thought deliberately about living so openly, it's just what I've done. I take her words as a compliment and compliments always make me blush a little.

Her words have spun around in my head all week.n At the same time, I have assigned an essay to my seniors based on the This I Believe curriculum from NPR. I've completing the tasks right along side of them and I have discovered a theme for every step (forward and back) that I have taken in my life. That theme is struggling out of the shadows. I spent my high school years painfully shy. I wore huge shirts to hide my body and long bangs to hide my face. Why did I do this? I have some ideas, but I don't need to rehash all of that.

What I do want to do is to live comfortably in my own skin. This is me. This is my world. It's time for me to seize what I can, not violently, but through all of my senses and into every pore. If it's cold outside, why complain? Make some tea, grab a blanket and a book and enjoy. If my body hurts, it's time to take a rest. If it is not inconvenient or selfish, road trips will continue. This is not to say that I won't be irrational from time to time, but if I can keep that in check, I hope my soul will feel a little better.

An invitation

I've just started reading Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. She is the photographer who is best known for this iconic Dust Bowl photograph.

She eventually settled into teaching and an assignment that she liked giving to her college students asked them to answer the question, "Where do I live?". According to the book, "she wanted to see an intimate relation between the photographer and the subject of her or his photography." Therefore, a picture of an apartment or house wasn't going to cut it for this assignment. I read that page several days ago and it has really stuck with me.

This is a year of tremendous transition for me and sometimes, I wonder how I got here and where I'm headed. I've decided to explore this question of "Where do I live" as a theme for this spot. Oh sure, there will be the usual rants about work and likely my newly minted single life. But, I've been searching for a theme and this will do nicely for this year. I'll share poems, scrapes of papers, and photographs that get at the essence of this question. I'd like to invite you to share your answer or answers and we'll collectively design a map of our lives. Here's my first answer, a poem I've been toying with in my head for weeks. Enjoy!


Whence

From smoke encased womb, I emerged,
Frightened of shadows, disappointment, and success.
Kept in a transparent box by parents who couldn't keep that uncle away.
Adult quarrels isolate more intensely.
Fighting siblings, now strangers.
Love, sex, love, sex,
Blindly unable to differentiate.
Self exile to the land of drive-thru coffee, doughnuts, and shinny.
Unconditional love of a child
welds steel to my veins ,
frees my voice.
Whence and destination.