Tag Archives: Fear

Winter’s End: That Saturday And This

March 9, 2019 By in Daily WP, Thirty-Nine Stories Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That Saturday mid morning I am propped in my bed, my left knee again elevated. I once diligently tracked my miles, injuries, twinges. Now I cannot say how many times this knee has waylaid a day’s plans. Enough. The night before I prayed because I still believe there are miracles even for those of us whose needs are comparatively small. When I ask for my own healing, I also plead provision for Syrians, Yemenis, North Koreans, and when I wake with my knee to swollen to walk, I wonder if there was a choice at the front desk and it just made sense to nourish a child instead. For an hour or so, I think and write about the distribution of miracles, the needs of our world, the fear I have that I am blind to the good I have, the fear I have that I cannot hear what I must, in my heart, to live. And then I use crutches to go from one room of our apartment to the next, to see the children who are just fine, and perhaps glad, at not having to rise and dress for the day, or do anything at all.

The children are sunk in beanbag chairs with their little screens close to their little faces. I ask my girl to help make egg for breakfast. Egg and avocado. Egg and hash browns. Egg and ketchup. Scrambled or fried. Orange juice or milk. Their little faces look up, my girl gets up and she is helpful in the kitchen. My kids know I am broken today but my girl is tender in a way that surprises me, asking can she get this for me, or that, do I need anything, am I okay? My boy remains slouched in his beanbag chair. Unless I say otherwise, he will stay in underwear the entire weekend. My girl too. I look at them both, with their plates balanced on pale legs, screens blinking and singing, and return to my bed.

I make a heat pack from my husband’s sock and two cups of dry rice. I microwave the sock for four or five minutes. Ice does nothing for my knee. The heat feels so good. I arrange pillows to elevate my knee again. I have water within reach. I have a chocolate bar. I have my laptop and earbuds and a ranked list of the Oscar nominated movies.

For three days we eat rice and seaweed for dinner. There is a little restaurant on the block that sells bap for a thousand won and I send the kids to get three bowls. We sit in a line on our sofa and watch Isle Of Dogs, Apollo 13, Castaway. I send them to bed with kisses and lopsided snuggles, and heat my rice sock, prop my knee and watch another movie in bed. The pattern works in a way I don’t like.

That Saturday I was supposed to rise and run, return and make breakfast. Perhaps bacon and eggs, or crepes with whipped cream and strawberries. I was supposed to bike to a French cafe for lunch, a monte cristo or mushroom risotto. I was supposed to return home and make a coffee, write at the table while my children play outside or build a fort inside. That Saturday mid morning I think what is the point of being extra miserable when I am already miserable, and I eat two chocolate bars fast, and a lot of popcorn while watching Can You Ever Forgive Me, which is a truly terrific movie. Then I watch The Wife (Glenn Close is great, but the book is better). I read Moo by Jane Smiley. I write. I read Ephesians. I start a series I heard was good. Before the weekend is over I finish eight hours of an HBO series and one more movie. I cannot remember a more concentrated time of television watching. The last time I might have consumed so much of a screen was thirteen years ago when Justin and I bought the first two seasons of The Office, binged on a hot day with the curtains closed and ac cranked. Then we took a break to pick up pizza. Now I break to rewarm my rice sock.

On Sunday I sit on the couch and look at the smog. The air purifiers are both running high and the apartment hovers at an AQI of forty-seven. I hobble to the door of our drying room and feel a tiny slip of air at the jamb, find packing tape and tape the door sealed. Our AQI drops thirty points. I think about taking a picture of the smog. I cannot. For the same reason I cannot take a photo of my grossly swollen knee. I can remember both well enough, without proof. Years ago I read a blog post by a woman recounting her car accident while on vacation in Costa Rica. She included a photo of herself sobbing on the roadside. The equivalent for me is staring at the middle distance of our view, a forested hill made invisible by smog, and wondering how to write a sentence to explain the fear knotting my belly at the thought of staying in Korea for another two years of bad air, and all the tangential thoughts that follow: the utter selfishness of corporations banking their dirty, under(or un)regulated industry on China’s east coast, the impotence of regional governments to cut coal in favor of renewable or nuclear power energy options, my own careless use of plastic.

I briefly consider another fast, for the sense of control. To show I am doing something to heal my body, in petition. I tell the children we need to tidy the apartment. The girl helps. The boy helps, but grumbles. I say to him, I would like to be able to do all of this by myself but I need your help. That is it, that I need your help. My husband is away, my body is broken, my mind is tired. When my husband messages me from Cuba I hate him just a little.

A friend and her son visit and for an hour or so we talk about the air and our fortune (we can monitor and control the air we breathe, while much of the world cannot), and about books or movies. Our boys play nicely. I tell her I’ve decided to quit drinking coffee and alcohol. I read that both cause inflammation. What I will miss is the ritual of an afternoon latte and open notebook, a glass of wine while I cook, or two glasses with a friend. I can do anything for a time. I can quit caffeine and alcohol. My body will heal. I cannot be inflamed forever.

Can I. There is a flame in my body. If I might have some oxygen to burn. When I do fast, I feel my body burn. I go warm at night, wake with sweat. It’s delicious to be warm of my own burning body.

I want to run. This thought is not far from any other thought. Between that Saturday and this the swelling leaves my knee and I learn to walk again. I watch my ankle and foot through the motion. Heel roll up outside ball big toe heel roll up outside ball big toe. I watch to keep my knee over my ankle. I watch to keep my ankle steady. I watch to keep my toes awake. My foot is tired after one day. Between that Saturday and this my husband returns from travel, marvels at the smog, unpacks souvenirs from Cuba. I want to run. He turns forty and I promise to celebrate better when the air is clean and we can go for an afternoon bike ride along the river, and we will. But also, this year I did not I want to run have the energy I want to run to go out with the kids to let them I want to run choose a gift or decorate the apartment for his birthday with I want to run a banner or balloons. I bake a cake, make a promise and the next morning he is sick.

This Saturday my husband lays on the couch, unmoving. Drink water, I say, and he does. He takes medicine. He sleeps. I take the kids on a bike ride, what we might have done last Saturday if, and I go slow behind my boy and girl, watch my knee when I drive the pedal down, watch my ankle when I drive the pedal down, watch my knee and ankle through the motion to keep the joints aligned. And it is perhaps too much work to heal at all. I am mildly annoyed my husband traveled to clean air and warm climate with health and returned to be sick so that my run of solo parenting extends to the small interventions of a Saturday afternoon. The children squabble while we are out. I speak loudly so they can hear all the way down their bodies that love is a choice. And you cannot control the other. Love between two is never equal. Sometimes you give more. Sometimes your brother or sister gives more. You love without supposing to earn anything. Be nice even if you don’t have to be nice. Be kind. Generous. I am loud enough I see a woman turn to look at me. I am loud enough to hear all the way down my body.

The kids apologize to one another, and to me, and I say what I say, that I love them very much. My girl is put in her own thoughts on our ride home, hopping off her bike to walk for a stretch before resuming at racing speed. My boy asks if his sister is okay when she stops again to walk and we continue on, and I say, She knows the way home.

Sometimes I am afraid I am too honest about how much work it is to be a person, to love at all, to follow Jesus. I am afraid I discourage my children. Or I am afraid that what they might take on as natural and easy, I turn to a hard way because for me being a person, loving, following Jesus is hard.

When I am home again I balance on one leg, and then the other. I do this because I want to run. Yet this Saturday I am made to be slow. We eat two dozen strawberries. I finish reading a book. My boy kicks a soccer ball with a friend. My girl rearranges her room again. My husband rests his body on the couch. I feel how my belly and thighs go soft now. I see the middle distance return to our view. Before the children go to bed they come to me to snuggle and we lay together in my bed. I am glad for my children. They are lights. They tell little jokes they have between themselves or the three of us. We tickle and nuzzle. We sigh because sleep is near, and they leave to their separate rooms to dream. I stay awake a little longer to do this, to remember that Saturday and this Saturday at the smoggy end of winter.

Twelve of thirty-nine. 1894 words.

Yet I Hold What I Have

May 17, 2018 By in Daily WP Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

For a few years I expected the worst. Justin would be late from work and I’d stand at the window looking out at the desert, certain he was dead. When he traveled I would imagine if he didn’t return. I realized I didn’t know anything about chunks of our shared life. He tracked our finances. He knew how to fix a wobbly chair. He planned our summer vacations. For years I expected the worst but continued to allow the kids to climb, jump, run and bike fast. Now the fear that my spouse or child might die is a fear that keeps quiet, but during my early motherhood that fear would swell to a point of certainty. If I called Justin and he didn’t answer, I began to cry. The afternoon I saw my two year old daughter had opened her bedroom window by standing on a little chair and was sweeping dust off the sill with her hand, I went cold. I didn’t shout but I held her tightly, feeling dizzy at the thought. We found a way to lock the sliding window and screen.

I might have expected the worst because I understand that the worst can happen to people. I was Polly Klass’s age when I saw her picture on People magazine at the checkout. I was twelve or thirteen when I read The Diary Of Anne Frank. I heard about an Olympic runner in Bosnia who trained despite having to dodge bullets. I learned about mental illness. I read about the Holocaust. I didn’t understand Rwanda. My great-grandmother told me her mother and infant brother died in the flu epidemic and when her father could not raise his remaining two children, he gave my great-grandmother and her brother to a couple who provided, but were not warm. The worst can happen to people.

And people live through. Continue. During those early years of motherhood, two things happened that started to shape my relationship with fear, suffering and grief. Midway through a difficult pregnancy, my friend Liana gave birth to her third son who lived one hour in the hands of his dad. That is now seven years ago but the memories of Liana on bedrest, and the phone call that told me she’d lost her son, still turn my heart. A few days after she was released from the hospital, I stopped by a cafe to pick up a coffee and saw her a moment before she saw me. She was sitting at a table waiting for her husband who was inside with their boys. She was empty armed and blank faced. The mercy was, Liana didn’t try to rearrange her features to make me okay. The second thing that happened was my parents’ neighbor Rose died weeks after a cancer diagnosis, leaving her husband and eight year old son. I did not know Rose well, but I knew she loved her son, wanted another baby, was excited about homeschooling. One summer I talked with Rose in my mom’s kitchen, encouraged by her straightforward faith in Christ. But when Rose died, I ached with shame at how much I worked at love, how uncertain I was at parenting. I ached with fear I might die before I learned how to love my children simply, sacrificially.

The following few years I practiced more honesty in my faith, more neediness. Motherhood was a catalyst to surrender, heart change, fuller joy. Fear subsided as I learned my identity in Christ, as I preached to myself the great care the Father has for each of his children. But fear also subsided as I witnessed others suffer loss and walk sorrow.

I am still finding a way to say this next part. During this past year I imagined myself inoculated against those losses we count as worst: spouse or partner, child, body. I am so comfortable with my ordinary suffering. The low grade depression like a background hum, ready to swell or lessen with the roll of my month or year. The pains of having much and so managing or neglecting gifts, like hiring help with housework, deciding where to get take away, sorting a closet full of clothes, or choosing what to do on a wide open Saturday. I like my ordinary suffering. I have witnessed others’ suffering. I have empathized and entangled. I do not want to wash my child’s dead body. I do not want to kiss my husband’s dead body. When I stepped into a conversation about suffering and grief with Sabrina, she surprised me by saying God does not give us more than we can bear: a platitude I would not say to any bereaved person, she could say within the year her husband died. She carries so much. She is as loved as I and we are both held in the Spirit, but when she said that I thought, Well, there you go. I can’t bear it. That single truth summed up my supposition that God understood I could be near grief, intercede, care for others, but that I am also ill prepared to suffer anything more than a lifetime of mild depression.

All of us are ill prepared to suffer anything more than a lifetime of mild depression and some of us can barely handle that. While I pretend proximity to great loss might inoculate me against great loss, the better comfort is this: we all suffer, we all lose. I move toward and away from this thought but find such comfort in the connectedness of my experience and yours, the lack of anything new under the sun, the truth that we all suffer, we all lose. I do not need to stand at the window waiting my turn. I am allowed to live with peace and joy. I surrender fear. Let my husband go away from me and return. Let my children bike ahead and arrive. Let me run alone at dawn. Liana and Sabrina live and grieve and live. Rose grieved and died. I hold what I have. I cannot do more today.

(1011 words)

Kleines Cafe, Vienna

July 26, 2016 By in Daily WP, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This is an essay draft, the ideas from a late morning coffee. Verb tense is a small mess. I need to read the whole thing aloud to hear what I want it to sound like. This next school year will very likely be our last in the Middle East and lately I’ve been feeling more afraid than hopeful for change. Also, this summer I’ve been seeing pregnant women, babies and toddler every third step and that’s turned over more thinking about my early motherhood, a time that remains lovely and difficult to remember. Anyway, there might be something to this start. I’ll find out if I go back to it in a month or two.

The online reviewers give Kleines Café 4.3 stars. There’s a note about Kleines being a café locals go to and a picture of a latte in a clear mug so you can see the band of espresso between the whole milk on bottom and the frothed milk on top. That was the latte I ordered after finding the place a couple of blocks off Stephansplatz. I navigated what looks like easy turns following the blue dot on Google maps and then, even with the café in front of me saying Kleines Café with two doors open to its small rooms, I looked at the map and saw the pin dropped maybe fifty meters further and wondered if there were two Kleines Cafes in the same block. Be where you are, I told myself, and stepped into an alcove of a dining room.

I was going to write. When you go somewhere to write, be a little picky about where you sit. I like to sit at the side or back of a room but not with my back to others because the pause between thoughts or paragraphs is a good time to see what people are like. There really isn’t a back or side at Kleines. You go in and you’re in the middle of the whole room wherever you sit. Cracked, cigarette scarred vinyl upholstered benches line either side of the room. A bar with three wood backed swivel stools is where the waiter double checks orders before carrying trays out to the patio tables where most patrons sit. I could have sat outside but the tables and chairs are wood slatted with spindly metal legs standing on cobblestone. I don’t like to write at a wobbly table. I sat near the door at a marble topped table with enough space for my latte, water and notebook if I set the sugar, salt and pepper and ashtray on a chair. There were two more tables on my side and then a few steps down to the toilets and a narrow hall opening to a second room. I don’t know what’s in that second room. Maybe another bar. The kitchen has to be back there somewhere too.

I ordered a latte and opened my notebook. All morning I’d thought about the regret I have, for a couple of years when the kids were little and I wavered, insecure and angry but recognizing those currents and seeking security and peace in God. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I’m enjoying my kids more now than when they were babies and sometimes I feel bad about that. Some of the new joy is attributable to relative ease of having school age children who tie their shoes, wipe their bottoms, read books and play Lego. And some of the joy stems from a shoot of security I root daily, that I am loved by God. Maybe it was my age or being a new mom, but when the kids were babies I looked at myself and saw this vein of pride that for years had pushed me to seek the approval of others.

Parenting is humbling. And parenting in a social media blitz of links and posts is devastating if you aren’t sure of your own purpose. Even if you are sure. So I opened my notebook to write more about this. I didn’t figure it out. Instead I sort of paralyzed myself playing a highlight reel of my approval seeking ventures.

My daughter strings together nonsensical lyrics, walks through the street pretending she’s a husky, wears polka dot socks with stubby blue leather boots and carries a smartphone made out of a Tic Tac box covered with stickers. I sat in Kleines Café thinking I can’t watch her lose any of that sureness. I thought of my mom too who was my age, thirty-five, when I was a sophomore in high school. What did she see when she watched me walk out the door wearing old corduroys I’d salvaged from St. Vinny’s thrift shop? Did she think I was making it okay? When I was fifteen I had a shell of superiority, not too different from armor most teenagers wear. Now, at thirty-five, I get a little nauseous at the thought like me because it’s a heavy chain to drag through all my places and relationships.

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Underscoring Nothing

October 12, 2014 By in Daily WP, Process Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Today I played with syntax. More on that tomorrow. Near the end of my writing session, I decided: One more page. Usually one more page is my push to say what I really want to say, but today, it was my push away from what I really want to say. We all have things that show up in our notebooks every other session. Sometimes I want a break from that repetitive thought – whether an idea, worry, memory, feeling, prayer. Sometimes I just want to not scratch the itch. I want to pretend ___ isn’t there.

I think composting is a valuable part of writing practice, but sometimes I just don’t want to rake through the mulch again. So today when I sat to write one more page, I was (and wasn’t) surprised how difficult it was not to give ___ its space, or even to name it.

Because I’d just finished messing around with a syntax exercise, some of my phrases seem looser, coming unbidden. That was unexpected and fun.

In the following I’ve boldfaced ideas I might return to. Do that in your own WP, circling or underlining words, phrases or ideas that you want to come back to at another session.

I want to rearrange, order effort my home. Pull a room from dropping off. All there out there first thoughts penned carefully one word one word one word but still a tinge of wild, like smeared paint. This is what happens when I quit thinking about ___ (always at the base of my skull, a little stone). I need a break from ___.

Steadily writing one plodding word after another, one more away from ___ which shows up here even when I want to quit thinking it: a little stone taking up space in my page as a short underscore. Underscoring nothing. Literally underscoring nothing.

All that nothing holds at least a hundred words I am not wanting here because those hundred words (more) have been written a few pages back, a few notebooks back; those hundred words have been prayed on the treadmill, cried on my bedroom floor, whispered at the kitchen sink. If only I could whittle ___ to one hundred words.

I would feel better and worse about everything.

I was going to write about my home. ___ gets in my way. God, please.

My daughter wants an art table. I want one too, to keep our dining table. Our dining table. We orbit. We put stuff on every surface. I have a box of papers I think might be too important to pitch but I’m not sure. Sometimes I think about the mess we’d leave if we all died in a car accident: know our lives by a cupboard of child’s drawings, bins of Lego, hidden chocolate bars, writing on walls, garlic stuffed green olives, a baking stone, mismatched furniture. It kills me to think of anyone else deciding what to keep when they open a drawer of hair bands, sunglasses and a lone playing card.

This makes me sad. It makes me want a kind of order. An art table. A world map.

I think I can stop now. I can go home and open the drawers, decide what we keep.  I am afraid once I quit putting one word after another here that I’ll be full of ___ again, giving ___ more than a hundred words. I almost want to write my way through the end of this notebook, about anything but ___. Fuck. Instead, I finish here. Go make room for an art table.