It is not what I expected in a meeting at the end of another long workday.
A series of self-care surveys.
Not so much the physical, psychological, and emotional ones.
The spiritual one…
There’s my word – awe!
‘Other’, for me: Write about all these things.
Which I do.
And my spirit sings.
In my planner for February is this quote:
Relationships are the fabric of our lives. They should be treasured every day, but sometimes we get caught up in the stresses of life and forget to express gratitude to those we love most. How can you show more appreciation and kindness this month?
This notion of relationships as fabric captivates me. Fabric is made of woven or knitted fiber. Some fabrics are delicate. Some are strong. Fabric can tear. I remember a skirt I bought as a teenager when I started making some steady money of my own. High-waisted, flared, houndstooth, almost ankle length. Tons of fabric. It hung in rippling folds, fabulous in its 1980s way. I adored it. I was wearing the skirt, and hadn’t had it long, on the day I knelt in the floor to pick something up and inadvertently stepped on it with my high heel, which tore right through the fabric when I stood up…rrriiiiiip.
A six-inch tear in the lovely houndstooth, to my horror. I might have cried (I cannot recall) but I wasn’t ready to pitch the glorious skirt.
I brought it to my mother.
She was a seamstress who worked for a major department store. She tailored men’s suits, fitted bridal gowns (“these girls want the dresses completely remade”), and took in sewing at home. Many a night she spread fabric across the kitchen table, pinned patterns, marked and cut the cloth with sharp scissors, a rhythmic snip-snip-snip. She made several stuffed animals, like mice and precious long-eared bunnies with a wardrobe of changeable clothes. Her work was stellar; everyone said so…
“Mom, can you fix this?”
I handed her my voluminous, mutilated skirt.
She considered the rip, held it closed with her fingers, puffed on the cigarette clamped in her lips.
“I can try.”
She fixed it. Not like I’d imagined. The stitching was bulky and obvious. “I had to go over it more than once,” she explained. It looked as big as a train track to me. Like the garish stitching on the Frankenstein monster’s brow.
I loved that skirt. I’d paid too much money for it to just throw it away. Maybe I was expecting magic…
I wore it anyway, hoping the long folds in the natural draping of all that fabric would hide the ugly scar. Most people never noticed, but I knew it was there.
Relationships are the fabric of our lives.
Fabric can tear. It can be mended, but it won’t be exactly as it was before the ripping.
So it is with relationships. We wear the scars in hidden places. How much could be avoided by careful attention and mindfulness in the first place…especially if we value a relationship…
Sometimes we get caught up in the stresses of life and forget to express gratitude to those we love most. Show more appreciation and kindness…
This goes a long way in preventing the ripping, the unraveling.
In every relationship, great or small.
The thing about relationships:
they never really end. They are
with us, always within us, inextricable as the
silkworm’s thread to silk fabric,
forming the infinite intricacies of our
days, our stories, our lives.
Photo: A Symbiotic Relationship. Fouquier ॐ. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
*******
with thanks to the Slice of Life community at Two Writing Teachers
and the relationships forged by sharing our stories
An unexpected gift this week
a means of keeping time
calling to me stop and seek
the sounding of its chime
a reminder at each passing hour
when crystals dance and music plays
to hear the song and tap the power
in every moment of my days.
Yesterday, it happened
at morning arrival
buses and cabs lined up
behind the school
waiting for the ringing of the bell
to release students into the building
staff gathering outside to receive them
while across the narrow street
from the sidewalk
graced by quaint and picturesque houses
a little child crossing
a car coming out of nowhere
not stopping in time
the sound
indefinable thud
like one low drumbeat
or heartbeat
a split-second silence
before collective screaming
then sirens
flashing lights
a knot of people
police and EMTs
a little red jacket in a heap
on the gray asphalt
two loose shoes underneath the car
staff, all the while
attempting to usher
other children inside
but they have seen
they have seen
some saw the little one
clutched in his weeping mother’s arms
some saw him
helped to his feet,
able to stand
some saw EMS get him
into the ambulance
all the long, dark
storm-clouded day
murmurs of
shock
horror
worry
until, just before dismissal,
he came to school with his mom
to show his friends he is okay
his little scatched face, pure sunshine
many of us
overcome with tears
awestruck
by this heroism
on her part
and his
and by the amazing grace
of God
that happened yesterday.
Child shoe. zendritic. CC BY-NC-SA.
Winter mornings
dawn in gray monochrome
before the sun bursts on the scene
like a passionate artist
with its gilded palette
Driving to work
in this gray in-betweenness
I note the doves
always sitting on the power lines
like heralds
their plump bodies
of soft sandy colors
framed by the oyster sky
reminding me:
look for the peace this day
live as peacefully as possible
this day
Then, in the strange way
of life
as I drive home
weary and worn
the golden part of the day
nearly spent
what should I see
on other power lines?
Hawks
big and breathtaking
still as statues
painted in shades of rust
They might remind some people
of raw bloodthirstiness
or predatory fierceness
but their beauty
fills me with such awe
that it’s all I can do
to keep my eyes on the road
driving home
as I think about how my winter days
are bookended by birds
and how there’s something
inherently sacred
and profoundly satisfying
in that.
Dove. Jim, the Photographer. CC BY 2.0
Red-Shouldered Hawk. goingslo. CC BY 2.0
(One of these days, when I can stop the car safely, I am going to get my own photos of my hawks…)
*******
with thanks to Ruth at SOS-Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog
for today’s inspiration to write:
“You are invited to linger in your winter memories, reach deep and pick a golden moment to share.”
“Heart” is the Spiritual Journey prompt for this first Thursday in February.
Thanks to Linda Mitchell for hosting our group of writers.
On a Sunday afternoon at the end of July, 2019, my husband had a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated by EMTs and went straight into surgery after arriving at the hospital. He got four stents and spent several days in induced hypothermia to reduce trauma to his brain, which can happen when blood flow has ceased and is suddenly restored. He recuperated slowly, painfully; his sternum had been broken by the CPR which saved his life. He came home. One morning in September he woke to jolts in his chest and tingling down his arm. I took him back to the hospital. More heart attacks. This time he had four bypasses. The surgeon mended his sternum with a little metal plate.
He is doing well now. In fact, up until winter settled in, he was doing eight-mile hikes in the park a couple of times a week and feeling as good as he ever has.
As this first Thursday in February drew near with Valentine’s Day and “heart” as the Spiritual Journey prompt for the month, I thought of a couple of things I might like to explore. I had chosen one, in fact, when I saw the heart-shaped hospital pillow that remains in our bedroom. This pillow was given to my husband after the bypass surgery. His attending nurse wrote on it with a Sharpie: “Keep hugging your heart!”
I thought, this is it. This is what I need to write about.
These pillows are given to all patients recuperating from open-heart surgery. The patients hug them when they have to cough or sneeze, lessening the severity of the jolt. The pillow protects the incision site whenever the patients move and when they practice the necessary deep-breathing exercises for their lungs.
It just so happens that the hospital where my husband’s surgery and recuperation has the lowest mortality rate in the country for heart bypass patients (according to reports from 2017-2019). It also just so happens that the county’s resuscitation rate is the highest in the nation. So, if you’re going to have cardiac arrest and need cardiac surgery, it’s the best place to be.
My husband is evidence of this.
I think about the surgeon who held my husband’s heart in his hands, who grafted those bypasses. He told us that as soon as the first graft was done, my husband’s heart immediately began beating stronger; it was hungry for the blood. It wanted to live.
Now. Where’s the spiritual element in all this, you ask?
Beyond the miracle that one human can cut open another and repair his heart, and that this repaired person can heal and live life awhile longer, is the Great Physician who is able to transform hearts and lives. When I was young, I attended a Bible study group in which a couple of guys could play guitars and we’d often sing this version of Psalm 51:10-12:
Create in me a clean heart, O God
and renew a right spirit in me
Create in me a clean heart, O God
and renew a right spirit in me
And cast me not away from thy presence, O Lord,
take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation
and renew a right spirit in me.
Godly heart-grafting, I would say. Cleansing, taking away the bad parts, restoring. The heart must be transformed before the spirit can be renewed. Sometimes a great deal of work must be done…but the Lord is able. If we let Him work. If we are hungry for it. We often think of letting Him into our hearts but it’s really more a matter of offering our hearts—battered, damaged, tangled, sick as they may be—to Him. He knows exactly what is needed. Psalm 51 is the cry of David’s heart after Nathan the prophet confronted him with his adultery and murder. It can be the cry of any of our hearts as we place them in the healing hands of Almighty God, craving His mercy.
I rejoice that my husband lives, that he was made well, that the hospital and the EMTs are the best around.
I rejoice more that the Lord forgives and heals hearts and spirits. He works on my own, daily. He is the physician and the pillow, the healer and the comforter. The ultimate heart-hugger. He is the best place to be.
Not to mention that His own mortality record is unsurpassable.
Funny how I ordered “awe”
and when it finally came and I put it on,
that very night
I dreamed
of finding my grandparents’ old car
the ’64 Ford Galaxie 500.
It was restored
shining, fire engine red, beautiful
and I drove it home
(of course I’d just been
writing poems about this car, so…)
but in this same dream
on the night I first wore “awe”
I left the Galaxie in the parking lot
and the light turned gray
like it does right before dawn
and I heard one lone cicada rattle
one of my favorite sounds in all the world
again connected to my grandparents
and summers at their country home
except in the dream, I knew it was January
and it is a miracle, isn’t it,
to hear a cicada in winter…
don’t ask how I ended up in the backyard
-this part of the dream is erased, alas-
but I found myself standing in the grayness,
facing the woods,
watching a bright red cardinal
feeding in the grass
maybe because I’d actually seen one doing that
earlier in the day
of course, this was Grandma’s favorite bird
-I am sensing a theme-
then, then, a little bird was flying
zigzagging overhead
so I called to it,
held out my hand,
and it LANDED THERE,
right in my outstretched palm.
I could feel its tiny feet,
its tiny beating heart…
I spoke to it, and it flew off…
but I was not sad,
just amazed
and filled with joy
all this I dreamed,
the very I night
the awe I ordered arrived
and I put it on.
a tritina, with love – Franna
How you make me smile,
your sweet head adorned with ribbon,
eyes glimmering with light.
Such a celestial interplay of light
across your face when you smile,
recognition just beginning to ribbon.
Gift of my life, tied with ribbon.
I’m dissolved by the light
of this angelic smile.
Your smile, a ribbon of light in my soul.
Micah, three months old
lit bits and pieces 