now and then

Lately my inner and outer life have been encountering one another with a particular curiosity and fizz, which every so often results in an alchemical story-busting magic. Like an onion that you had no idea held layers beneath its taut brown skin peeled back and then peeled back again. I have held old stories tight to my chest about what my life and I am supposed to be like - tight as the layers of an onion pressed against one another. I have held them so close I didn't know they were there. 

When circumstances conspire to allow me to hold an old story out away from my body so I can see it properly and recognize the thin places where it isn't really true, I feel exhilarated. And scared and sad. Stories about what I am supposed to perform for others, how I am supposed to look, what I can control, what I should accomplish and desire, what I should be able to contain and manage when it surges inside me. 

I found myself unexpectedly crying the other day in the middle of telling someone how amazing it is that we can keep growing and becoming more truly ourselves as time passes, despite our culture's suggestion that aging is a one-way trip to something smaller, lesser than what we once were. I am thrilled that I get to set down old stories that are no longer and maybe never were true and consider new ones that reveal something closer to what really is. 

The tears were for Mike, who never got to experience this distinct stage of life, one defined less by striving and articulating one's path and more by consolidation of and learning from all those grasping years before. 

I was forty when Mike died. I felt crushed by the almost immediate awareness that an essential part of me died with him. I mourned for my children who lost both their father and the mother they used to have, someone happily partnered and far more resilient and cheerful and competent than the raw grieving wreck I knew myself to be. 

They really did lose the old me. She is never coming back. The strange thing is that now, nearly four years later, I don't want her to.

I like my forties. I like how I make decisions and communicate and reflect on what I want. I like swearing freely and learning to ask for help and my fledgling efforts at growing spiritually. Even more surprising, I like the family we have become, the relationships we push and pull and play inside of as everyone keeps growing in his or her unique, relentless, stunning fashion. 

But so much of who we have become finds its roots in Mike's cancer and death. It freed us to be more honest, loving, angry, mindful of things other people often aren't. We like that. Which is, to say the least, confusing. 

It is profoundly sad to feel your strengths, the things you like about yourself, inextricably tied to your deepest loss. I long for sturdier bridges to connect the before times to the abundant present. I would like my children to know that all of this links to all of that, even if our world hadn't ruptured in between.

Last night at bedtime I told Beatrice how proud her papa would be - is - of her. 

Why? 

It's just the way you are, Beatrice. The way you think and move and make jokes and sleep and snuggle. Just being who you are is being someone your papa is proud of and loves so much.

Oh. 

And that brought forth a wave of anguish, a deep grief over her rapidly fading and lost memories. She feels left out. She wishes she had had more time. So we took out the book of photos I made for her birthday last year and told stories about all the images of Beatrice and Papa, all the moments captured that prove they were together and loved each other well. 

She feels guilty for not feeling sadder. She always tells me this with her eyes filled with tears. She feels guilty for liking our family the way it is, and not knowing what it was like before Papa got sick and died. If he walked in the front door right now, would he be a stranger to her?

No he wouldn't, I said. It might take you a few minutes. But you would know Papa, and he would know you. That never changes.

We cried for a long time, for how awful it is that he never met Ramona the dog, or our funny cats, or lived in this house, or knew about Beatrice's third grade teacher - so much of what structures everyday life. It's terrifying to think the gulf between us widens as we all grow. In one way, I know it never really does. But still I feel frightened. I can't lose him over and over. 

Many years ago, when our friend Edith asked Mike how he knew he was ready to marry me even though there was no way to know how I would change and he would change and what would happen for the rest of our lives, he said he felt confident that he would love whoever I became. However much changed, at the root of it, he had faith that I would still be me, a person he deeply loved. 

That can be true in the other direction too, even though it didn't occur to me then. However much I change, my love is unaltered. Maybe that slippery abstract truth is one of the bridges I long for. Maybe it can support all of us as I keep learning new stories and tentatively stepping into the truth they offer. 

Even so, I wish he'd met Ramona.  

lights in the dark

Last Friday around 4:45, I checked my phone and saw a text from my mom that read martinis tonight? I had just finished my last session of a long day, a long week. There had simply been more than I could handle with equanimity and I felt shaky. I had a pile of notes to write and it was nearly dark outside. 

My response? OMG YES. I decided the notes were for the next morning, packed everything up, and walked home through campus, through the park, down the cracked sidewalks to my house which was dark and still on the outside, bright and busy on the inside. I dumped my bag by the door, checked in with the kids, and made a screen time plan with Beatrice that I knew would be flouted the minute I shut the front door behind me. Then I walked to my mom's house, taking the alley and entering through the tall gate into her backyard, where I saw a sight that stopped me in my tracks. 

There was the menorah, aglow in the center of the bay window that faces out back. It was the sixth night. Each narrow candle wore a beautiful halo around its flickering flame. The bright light it cast into the darkness in which I stood outside was so improbable. The only reasonable response was to breathe, settle, and allow the stillness to touch me, if only for a moment.

Then I went inside and told my mom all about my crushing week, and drank and ate a lot, and felt like a grateful imperfect human connected to another human in a fragile precious world.

Before I sat down early the next morning to tackle the notes, on a whim I found a squat little candle and set it on my kitchen table. I made coffee and lit the candle and pulled out my laptop. Inhale, exhale. There I sat, picking up the clinical pieces of the week and putting them where they belonged, with a tiny fire to remind me that a person can really only do one thing at a time.

Beatrice and I went to our old church - the one we once attended with Mike, and left soon after he died - to make an advent wreath a few days before that. I had gone to services two or three times by myself, nudged when a friend kindly invited me sans pressure to give it another try (shortly after I mentioned I was feeling adrift at/about church in a previous post). Beatrice was totally not into busting in a new-to-her social environment and I can't remember now what I initially bribed her with. Turns out there was cookie decorating so that worked pretty well. In the end I made the wreath outside in the courtyard without her, chatting with old friends, as she hooked up with two other kids and ran wild and free all around the church campus. I couldn't have been happier.

Then on Sunday Beatrice grumpily agreed to come to church with me. On the walk there she replayed her worries about me ditching her to have boring adult conversations with old ladies and also what if the kids don't include her? But the kids are, it turns out - at least sometimes - angels. They welcomed her and just before the service, one of them ran up to Bea and asked if she wanted to torch with her in church.

Sure! she said, happy to be included.

Then Bea paused and looked at me. What's torching?

I explained it meant being an acolyte. Carrying a tall candle and being part of the church service. Wearing a red and white outfit. Ruthie, her new friend, insisted she could train Beatrice up in the next ten minutes and pulled her into the sanctuary. 

I sat there, dumbfounded. What was happening? My shy and hesitant Beatrice, my church-averse darling, donning an acolyte's ensemble?

I need not tell you how full my heart was, watching her process in, smiling beneath her mask. I tried not to be embarrassing or weird, or make eye contact for too long and cause her to second guess the whole thing. 

The part that really sent me over the edge was seeing three or four friends - women who have welcomed my presence back in this old stone building after such a long absence with nary a question or hesitation - whipping out their phones and snapping photos of this unexpected bright moment, grinning at me with their eyes, indicating they'd text the pictures later. They knew. We all shared it.

That evening we listened to Sufjan Stevens sing Christmas songs as we do every year and decorated our tree, which is now dripping with symbols and reminders of the many chapters of our lives, including Mike's childhood with ornaments from his family and mine with the candy cane I made in second grade and the little wooden church to commemorate my dad's new job in Providence in 1980, and all the Christmases of our children's lives. It was the least sad, most sweet tree-decorating since we lost Mike. After that we went to my mom's and ate latkes and lit the candles and opened her presents with friends. 

How I long for ritual, for everyday ways to invite the sacred into our lives. How bounteous is this season in the ways it answers that desire for holiness! There are so many lights in the dark. 

Last night Gabriel and I went to Target. We needed a few odd things and were already out after picking up books at the library. We so rarely run errands together; it felt good. We strolled past an aisle of candles and he noted I was on a real candle kick these days. 

Yep. Let's look.

We pulled down our masks to stick our noses in all of them and commented on their fake smells, until we found an enormous glass candle with three wide wicks. Three! It smelled fake too - but awesome-fake. Amber Applewood. Whatevs. We called it a mobile fireplace (wish we had a real one) and decided we absolutely needed it. It's your advent present, Mama, said Gabriel. We'll light it at dinner and feel warm.

And that's just what we did. 

wading out

I have never spent so much time in solitude in all my life. 

I grew up inside a family. I went to college and lived with roommates. I graduated and moved in with Mike. We lived together, and then got married, and never spent more than a few days apart. We had three children and parenthood took whatever sliver of boundary between me and other people that I once possessed and made it more diaphanous, more translucent, at times bordering-on-nonexistent (after a birth, or after Mike died). The way I have learned to move through the world is in direct response to other beloved people. All the time.

And here I am at the midpoint of a five day mindfulness retreat, led by a student of Thich Nhat Hanh in the spirit of his particular Buddhist school of practice and thought. When I planned this trip, I only knew I felt compelled to heal in a deeper way, to take a risk in the hope of becoming more whole. I clicked register and gave this retreat center lots of money because I wanted to accept and be present to whatever is, without fear and without shame. 

When I spoke to Beatrice at the tail end of the first day and heard her plead why can't you come home now, for about five minutes I seriously considered it. I mean, yeah, why can't I come home now? A big part of me wanted to. That part of me was extremely uncomfortable. Why exactly did I drive five hours away, leaving my children and my clients, burdening my friends and coworkers and mom, risking all kinds of domestic mishap, and inviting nearly a week of worry about all of it just so I could sit on a diminutive bean bag in a silent room doing absolutely nothing at all? How insane was that choice?

Now I've been here for three full days, and I'm beginning to understand. I think I needed about two days to fully wade out of the fast-moving stream of everyday life. In the beginning I couldn't truly comprehend that there was nowhere to be and nothing to do. I wanted to make a snack for someone. I wanted to drag myself up the stairs to do a bedtime routine. I wanted to reach out to a client I'm worried about and try to squeeze them into my overfull schedule. I wanted to make friends with the other people here and listen to their stories. But I resisted that initial impulse, in part taking a cue from our teacher, and instead I spend meals and open time mostly alone. 

Somehow my mind and my body have come into alignment. I almost look forward to sitting on the beanbag; at the very least, I feel at ease climbing onto that humble mount. I noticed right away that whenever I walk the path back to my little shared cabin and open the door to my room I smile. Hello little room, I actually say out loud. I'm back. It feels so safe and welcoming. I noticed I was also doing that with my meditation cushion - I didn't greet it out loud, that's just too weird in a group setting, but I felt an inward sigh of happy recognition - ah, I'm back. Here we are. 

This spontaneous at-homeness has made me curious about the experience of being at home in my own imperfect body, in this very imperfect moment, whether I am alone or with my people. Of having arrived, and arriving, over and over again. I'm back. I'm here.

Though I've resisted my usual ways of caring for others, I did bring four or five books because I didn't know before that I would find ways to feel like myself here, and a good book is a reliable way for me to feel at home. I've been reading The Overstory by Richard Powers which I feel like you've probably already read so you probably already know where I'm going with this: a book about trees is the perfect book to read when one is surrounded by trees in all their autumn glory with more time than ever to notice and admire them!

I just read the most moving passage this afternoon, which we have off from formal practice, in which a very lovable and solitary tree scientist reflects on how interconnected and cooperative trees are in the forest. She thinks that the more she and her colleagues learn, the less sense it makes to consider individual trees or even distinct species. "Everything in the forest is the forest."

OH! Non-self! I suddenly understood a Buddhist teaching in a new way. Everything in the forest is the forest. There is no part of me, and no part of you, that makes sense separate from our family, community, ancestors. We are trees, yet we are forest. 

Then I tucked my book into my backpack and took a walk in the forest here. I kept losing the path beneath the quickly accumulating layers of dead leaves underfoot and backtracking, uncertain which way to go. I was a little stressed and thinking things like they should really mark this trail better and maybe I'll let guest services know because someone could get lost! But then I took a breath and thought: I'm home. I'm home in my body, on this path/non-path, in this forest, on this retreat. And it was so beautiful there. I sat down on a rock to fish a pebble out of my sneaker, and I didn't get back up. I watched the birds in the canopy, the chipmunks scurrying along moss-covered rotting logs, the drifting brown and yellow leaves that floated in and out of shafts of sunlight on their way to the forest floor, each one landing around me with a quiet dry settling sound. After awhile I thought to myself shouldn't I get going? And then responded: I don't want to.

So I didn't. I stayed for a long time. There was nowhere I needed to be. I don't think that reality has ever registered quite so peacefully with me before today. 

This practice has been hard. I have felt a lot of pain inside me, and done my fumbling best - is this right? is this how? - to greet it with compassion and love. Inside me I find an ocean of love, and an ocean of grief, fathomless and deep. I imagine they are there inside you, too. I have cried inside my mask, gumming it up with mucus and tears, and wished to hide. I have confronted how afraid I am by the very idea of transforming my suffering. I have thought oh come on and inwardly rolled my eyes and then later sat with a book in my lap and looked up with surprise: Non-self!

I've felt spontaneous bursts of gratitude. For friends, family, work; for trees, sunlight, delicious food I don't have to cook, the moon, meals taken alone in a room full of people, for everyone who has supported me in making this possible. For my body. For all the places in this world where I can be at home. For two more days, and how I will hold it all with tenderness at the end and remember as I step gingerly back into the stream.  

brimming over

Lately, I can't seem to sleep in. It's Sunday morning, and I was awake long before six. I spent some time lying very still, trying to trick myself into falling back asleep, but my thoughts had other plans. 

Without my consent, they tried to work out why I feel so alienated from church, and what it is exactly that I am looking for. My thoughts reviewed my thus far failed efforts to find someone to stay with my kids and animals while I go on a mindfulness retreat later this month, and worried about a student I am seeing who is struggling. They reached for the threads of an evocative dream I had been moving through just a few moments before. And they took me back to this past Thursday, when Frances and I met up with two friends from Annapolis to tour Swarthmore in the morning and Penn in the afternoon.

My mom told me that Frances later described me as a puppy on Swarthmore's campus. That sounded about right. As we drove into town, past the old dilapidated apartment where I once lived, I became borderline giddy. The last time I had visited was with Mike and the kids when they were little, to meet up with some friends who were there for a reunion. I don't remember feeling like a puppy then, but I was making space for countless others who had their own stories and expectations and mixed-up histories; this time it was just me and my college-bound daughter on a brilliant sunny Thursday at the end of September. It smelled and looked and sounded exactly right, and I felt free to embody all my big feelings about taking in that abundance with her.

And sometimes, as happens when you re-enter an environment that is rich with memories and meaning, I could feel my twenty year old self taking center stage. And when that happened I often stood back and smiled at her, delighted by her, which is a much nicer feeling than looking back and feeling ashamed or convinced that she wasn't enough - or was too much - which I have felt at other times in my life. 

There were no formal tours offered that day, so I got to play tour guide for awhile. I immediately took our little group to the amphitheater on the edge of the Crum woods. On the way we passed a stone wall, where I paused and told Frances, Milena and Nathaniel that this was the exact spot where Mike and I had first kissed. 

Maybe because of the weird time-space magic going on, I felt not a shred of sadness in sharing that tender early moment with my husband who no longer walks the wooded paths of this earth. Rather, the sweetness and excitement of that afternoon filled my body. I told them how I had run directly from that kiss to my next class, walked into the room half-full of other students taking off backpacks and settling into desks, and grinned at them all. I could not hold it in; I announced to everyone: I just kissed Mike Brogan! and danced to my seat, where a male friend looked at me with a slightly embarrassed expression that meant: really, Meagan? wasn't that a bit much? - and I could have cared less.

Maybe that kind of behavior is acceptable when you're a senior at a very small college. Or maybe I was out of my mind, in total untrained puppy mode. Mike himself, as I later learned, would have been mortified by that kind of behavior. But none of that matters to me now. I treasure that memory.

Later we met up with an old professor of mine. We had been out of touch for nearly twenty years; I was a little nervous that she might not remember who I was, it had been so long. But she remembered well. 

She graciously answered questions and chatted with Frances and Nathaniel about Swarthmore, and then we sat down to talk while the rest of the group toured the lower campus. She had known Mike, and had not known that he died. And she had long ago divorced her husband who was also a professor in the religion department; he had known us both well, too. I used to babysit their children. They came to our wedding. They had modeled a kind of admirable adulthood to us when we were considering what we wanted our lives to be about, and that mattered. 

It was only when I sat down across from her, and she looked at me with her kind and generous eyes and my own filled with tears, that I flashed back to a memory with her from the first semester of my first year. My dad had just been diagnosed with cancer and I was going home for his surgery before chemo began. I hadn't told any adults at school; I was trying to muscle through all the work and confusion of that time on my own. She and I had a meeting to talk about my final paper for her class. When she asked how the writing was going, I started to cry, and told her about my dad.

She scooted towards me on her rolling chair, making caring maternal noises as her feet pushed her along her office carpeting, and wrapped me in a hug. I can hear her now: Oh, Meagan. Meagan. I'm so sorry.

She told me that my dad having terminal cancer was a big deal, and that I could have extensions on my papers. She told me my family was the most important thing and that I didn't need to do everything all by myself. She told me she would help.

What a gift that was! It changed everything about that moment in my life. And what a strange feeling, to be telling her about Mike, while that seventeen year old me experienced her care and support yet again. 

I gave her one of the little books I made from Mike's memorial service. We talked about everything. I got to see pictures of her daughter's adorable new baby and show her pictures of my other kids and talk about how exciting it was to visit colleges with Frances. She saw me then and she saw me now, and I was so grateful. My heart felt stretched and pulled in every direction. 

After we said goodbye, I found my people and we had lunch outside at the Swarthmore coop and headed off to tour Penn. Everything that day was filtered through the conversation of Frances and Nathaniel talking about their hopes for college, where they were applying, acceptance rates, SAT scores. This talk is normally off-putting to me - the endless strategizing about how to best position oneself part of it - because why can't young people simply work on becoming who they are and colleges could consider who would learn and grow well on their campuses and have that be sufficient rather than this anxiety-riddled money-fueled evil game - but anyway, I didn't mind at all on Thursday. I liked listening to their conversation. They are both such cool people. We ended back at Swarthmore, said goodbye to our wonderful friends and made one last stop at the college bookstore where Frances and I bought matching sweatshirts then walked under the tracks and up the big hill to our waiting car. 

It is as if one's life is an exquisite collection of oddly-shaped jewels, a thousand moments that if seen in the proper sunlight shine brilliantly. Maybe some are made of glass and have sharp edges that hurt, but these shine too. Normally in the rush of everyday life they sift through your fingers, one or another briefly popping into your awareness and sliding back into darkness, leaving a feeling behind for a little while. But on Thursday I magically held more of them than seems possible in my cupped hands. They didn't fall through my fingers; all those shining colors and shapes and surfaces stayed with me as we moved through the day. 

Because of this, my heart brimmed over with love for people past, present and future, including myself, again and again and again.