Beyond Walls

The homemade, hard-candy windows and gingerbread walls, that held hours of work in their structure, made a cacophony as they fell from the table and hit the floor. The shattered mess crunched underfoot.

“Oh, my f%&*ing word!”

This wasn’t my first gingerbread creation. It wasn’t the first time I had a wrecked one in front of me. It wouldn’t be the first time that I took in a deep breath, rolled my eyes, and started anew, driven by the need to not be defeated.

This time would be different.

I said, aloud to my husband, “I am going to wait five minutes before I decide whether or not to make a new one.”

Five minutes later: “I am going to decide later tonight, whether or not to make a new one.”

One hour later: “I am not going to make a new one.”

This might seem like giving up, but it was a new direction for me. It required me to accept failure, tolerate it, and endure the moments throughout the holiday season when I wished I had created something fun and festive and now felt something missing. This impelled me to mute my ego and open myself to being content with not getting my way. It demanded I sit with the forces that disrupt my day, by finding a way to walk with them instead of fight them or snuff them out.

The spot where the gingerbread house would be was in front of me and while I wish it were otherwise, it would not hold a gingerbread house. It was my challenge to not need to yearn for what I wish it had held. It was my challenge to appreciate it as is.

Well, I managed to handle that, but unfortunately, that was the only disappointment I handled well in the past few months.

For whatever reason, December confounded me. There were lots of metaphorical gingerbread houses shattered at my feet. My mood felt broken. My body pulsed with a defensive need to push back against everything in its path. While I had spent most of my life doing battle with my fickle mood, for the past five months things had felt on keel.

Not December.

As habit would have it, I spent considerable amounts of time ruminating on possible causal factors in my downward spiral. There are a few situations I was in because I didn’t assert myself. There was my entrenched insomnia that might be related to seasonal lack of daylight and, as I just stated, my disappointment in myself. No question that affected my mood, but my mood this time was different, with more rage than despondency. I talked to myself and there was no answer. I seethed at all the “stupid” events of the world, but it didn’t make me feel better. I entrapped myself in a toxic cloud of irritation, and it was suffocating. If I was a rooting animal, I would have buried myself in a hole somewhere. My primitive brain built a barricade, as if that would make me feel safe, again.

I wrote this poem for my traditional New Year card, (as it’s the only holiday I can be timely in sending cards), and it revealed that I did know the answer to my problem:

These days, with their chill and lack

of sun, we too easily incline inward, guarding

against the winds, hunkering behind

walls of our own making, thinking

we are protecting ourselves from further

onslaught.

Yet, the cold deepens.

 

For, these times require opposite action,

the courage to step outside our fortifications

and open to the widest perspective.

It is out there, on the distant horizon,

in the remote corners of view,

that we find the answers, the light

we crave.  It is out there,

that the universe spreads its arms,

embracing us with the warmth

of illuminating awe.

Brene Brown says in her book, Braving the Wilderness, that when we feel like putting distance between what bothers us and ourselves, we only exacerbate our situation. “Move in,” is her recommendation. “People are hard to hate close up.” She is so right about that. While she was talking about social divisiveness, I believe this applies to all our experiences of struggle. Things are hard to hate close up.

Depression, and its sister state—anger, are rooted in disconnection and separation. Us and them. Ourselves and it. There are multiple permutations of this experience. Our brain’s natural response to feelings of threat or danger is to fight, flee, or freeze. This reflexive response helped our ancestors survive brutal environments and conditions, but it hasn’t evolved to recognize the difference between an invading horde and a bothersome noise, or an intense disappointment. It misreads irritation, frustration, discontent as life-threatening. Those who know me best, can validate that my fight-or-flight response is overly reactive and has been since I came out of my mom’s womb. I would have thrived against an invading horde, but that skill is maladaptive in today’s world. The smallest frustration can send me into a deeply, negative, fight state.

I think my December was a mountain of various disappointments in my country’s leaders, in some events that I felt I couldn’t control (emphasis on “felt”), and in myself. Add the lack of daylight that triggered some intense insomnia (there were four nights when I achieved 0 minutes of sleep), and I began to emotionally wall off. Anytime anything threatened to break through that wall, something as small as a person talking to me when I was intent on ruminating about my awful state, launched me into a hot-fire, voiceless rage. As happens when that primitive part of the brain is activated, my logical-thinking, prefrontal cortex was deactivated. All rationality was gone. Any ability to find some way to soothe myself vaporized.

No surprise, then, that I developed a serious case of bronchitis that still plagues me in February. It’s a hard way to learn a lesson. My health, both physical and mental, depends on minimizing the reflex to build walls in a vain attempt to protect myself from disappointment, sadness, and frustration. I lost two and-a-half months of living.

How to prevent this injury and loss? When triggered I want to take moments to be mindful, to feel the ground under my feet, to feel my breath move in-and-out, to remember that times that challenge us are almost always temporary, like the tide that ebbs. It will require me to be honestly assertive about what I want. I want to remember that only imminent death is worthy of a full-throated, protective response. I want to develop a kit of exercises and/or activities to remain grounded. I want to be able to better tolerate dualities that are part of this life—that both good and bad can coexist, that bad doesn’t mean there is not good. That good doesn’t mean there is no bad, and that both provide material to better myself. Light cannot be appreciated without shadow and shadow cannot be appreciated without light. I want to “move in” when something gets uncomfortable; remove the delusion of protective walls; get closer to the struggle so I can see it, understand it, and find a way to live with it.

As Brown in Braving the Wilderness, sums it up, “But when we zoom in on our own life, the picture changes from a distant, raging, and atrophying heart to the beating pulse of our everyday existence.” Or, as Pema Chodron writes in, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, “When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?”

Here’s to learning to move beyond the walls that we build for ourselves, walls that separate and cause distance. Here’s to staying open to searching the vast horizon for that light to see the answers, to remind yourself that there is so much out there in which to find comfort. It really is right in front of us if we are willing to be vulnerable. That is how to feel free and find ease, no matter what crashes and crumbles at our feet.

Family

"We need to make sure to get together more often, because I don't want to only see you at funerals," my cousin said, as we gather for the first time in a number of years. We have come together at South Bend, IN, to the Notre Dame campus, where my dad and his brother had gone to college. My aunt, my uncle’s wife, suggested this and it is the perfect place, filled with memories and the future, as my nephew is touring it as a potential school to attend after he graduates from high school. 

It is beautiful, and crazy hot and humid. The heat index is 110 degrees. You know we love each other, because we would never be walking an enormous college campus together in that kind of heat for any other reason. 

The weight of the air matches the weight of my memories. We look so much older, compared to the last time we were together. My uncle is dealing with a serious health problem. He is the last of my dad's family, almost the age when my paternal grandfather died, and he struggles to walk because his legs are weak. His floppy golf hat is perched on his head, and as he gingerly moves along the sidewalk, from behind, I see my dad. Same hat, same walk, as he looked that last summer he was alive. Grief beat down and I worked to move through it and focus on what was in front of me. 

We are together, and it feels crucial to stay present in that. 

My uncle has my dad's voice. When he talks, and laughs, it's like dad is in the room. Dad died at 49, almost 40 years ago. You think you can't forget people you deeply love, but you do. You forget the creases in their face as they smiled. You forget their smell. You forget their presence in a room. You forget the sound of their voice. When my uncle speaks, I hear dad and it is a comfort to have that connection, again. We are mortal, but those who have died really do leave traces for us to follow. 

We reach the Grotto below the Bascilica. I am not one for praying. But, I am taken by the impulse to light a flame to burn for dad; for my cousin's step-son who has recently died, unexpectedly; and for my uncle. Afterward, I watch as the next generation, my nephews, light candles for their ancestors. The candles are in racks that descend from the stone wall, like the descent of generations. We spend quiet time sitting on benches, under sheltering trees. One of my cousins drives my uncle and mom back to the bookstore, where we will all meet up before heading back to the motel. The rest of us, head back out into the heat and sun. The campus has a large tree-filled quadrangle, and we head for that. The shade soothes my emotions as much as my body. It is quiet, the quiet of realization of impermanence, of softly exhaled breath. 

There is a lot of laughter that night. We play card games and take over a private room in our motel. My aunt's brother joins us. I haven't seen him for almost twenty years. As we talk and cajole each other, I surreptitiously tape-record some of our sounds, determined to preserve what I can of my dad and his family. Of course there are pictures, but the sounds envelop like a blanket of hugs, and I am trying to keep them for later. 

The next day, many of us head to Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan. It is another "heat danger" day. There is quite a line of cars to get to the parking area, about 2 miles long. We decide to stay in it. The lake is on my nephew's bucket list. My cousin has it on her own list of state parks to visit. We are here, we have time, it makes sense to stick with the plan. 

The wisdom of that came into question a bit, as we make our way from the hot parking area across scorching sand to try to find a spot with shade. It is about a 10-15 minute walk. The problem is mom is with us. She is almost 81. We forget that. She is also just through a course of antibiotics. We forget that, as well. I give her my sunhat, and she seems fine. She REALLY wanted to have her feet in sand and be near the water, as this is her own connection with my dad. He talked about coming here when he needed to get a break from studies. So, we continue. Luckily, we find a small bit of free sand under some tree shade. Mom sits on top of the cooler and half of us go swimming. 

The water is clear and cold, a delight. My nephews and brother join me and we float and frolick for over an hour. Those who aren't in the water have to be getting overheated, so we make our way back to the spot on the beach where mom sits. She says she is having a wonderful time and has that look she gets when filled with wonder at time and family and where her life has brought her. However, a few minutes later, she asks where the restrooms are. Upon hearing they are a distance away, she looks concerned. Then, it becomes clear that she is about to throw up. I manage to find a bag for her to use. As she leans into it, I can feel how hot her back is. I take the hat off of her head, grab a towel and ask my nephew to soak them in the cold lake water and bring them right back, which he does. After squeezing the water out of them a bit, I put the hat on her head and wrap the wet towel around her. She seems to get immediate relief with that. During all this, everyone else begins packing up and my husband makes the hike to get our car, begs the park rangers to let him drive to the closed parking lot that is right behind the spot where mom sits on the beach, and we get her into the air-conditioned cool. 

It is hard not to be incredulous that we, that I, could be so naive about her ability to handle the heat and the walk across the beach at her age. Again, it’s a sobering reminder that time has moved on, we are vulnerable to its wear-and-tear, and therefore it’s important to be gentle with each other.

That night, the card game is raucous and the stories and teasing are flying. Eventually, most of us wander off to bed. My brother and his wife, sister, cousin, and nephew (who is interested in Notre Dame) stay up longer, together. We are getting every last drop of each other, at this moment, not wanting our reunion to end, not wanting to only be together at funerals. 

We are all back at our homes, now. Back to the dailiness of our lives. As daylight fades, I turn on the recordings I made of our voices, together, laughing in unison and sense the lilt of their love taking a seat in my marrow. A smile lights my face.

Winter Sea

It does go a bit against instinct to drive to the coast in January. However, we were restless, it was cold, and we felt that there might be some beautiful scenery--and there was. It was more than we could have expected. The clouds, which were not in the sky over our home, made a remarkable backdrop. 

Truth—I was initially disappointed about the clouds. In my impulse to go to the coast was the idea of deep blue sea and sky, crystalline and sharp. But, as you can see, that is not what awaited us.

Thank goodness, because it was the clouds, disrupting a perfect, blue sky, that made all the best difference, just as learning to embrace imperfection can bring satisfying peace.

Giving up ideas of perfection can open you to more texture, more diversity, more gratitude than you ever realized was possible. I used to only want to take pictures of vast landscapes when the sky was clear. I am not sure what drove me to limit myself that way. Back then, there was nothing better to me than a perfectly, pure, blue sky. The first time I realized how simplistic this thinking was, occurred on a kayaking trip to Stonington. I wrote about this earlier. That day, as on this day, it was the clouds that provided all the wonder.

Don’t you find this happens in your lives? The moments that develop unexpectedly, against all our prejudices, are the precious ones. Clouds, both metaphoric and literal, are becoming my friends. They provide depth to the character within whatever or whomever they present themselves.

As I have tried to accept and have compassion for my own limitations and imperfections, the clouds that can sometimes hover and settle over me, I have felt a sense of ease. This restless, reactive Maineiac heart of mine is softening and opening to a loving contentment and appreciation for things as they most often are—ragged and rough-edged, filled with multiple dimensions and imperfection.