Lists (this one is going to be rough)

Asher loves lists. He can't write yet (although he'll "write" grocery lists), but he loves for us to list things out loud. Lists of silly things ("What happened to this table?" he'll ask. "A giraffe ran into," I respond. "What happened to the door?" "A rhino kicked it down.") cheer him up. We list what kind of animals we are and whether we are nice or bad. We list things we could do - go to the park, fly an airplane, chop down a tree. One of his favorite games is to hide under a blanket (on the bed, on the couch, in the car, place doesn't matter), and he starts, "Talk to Dr. Lyon, Mommy," pronouncing Dr. Lyon, a character from a Richard Scarry book, "Da da Lawny." I follow, "Dr. Lyon, where is my Asher? Did he go to the park? Noooo. Is he taking a bath? Noooooo. Is he playing games with Harper? Noooo. Dr. Lyon, where is my Asher? Oh, there he is." And Asher pops out. Over and over again.

Megan and I joke that liking lists is so first born. Don't I know it. I love lists. I keep a grocery list on my refrigerator door, a list of work things to do (I currently have three of them), and a list of personal things to do. I recently received a list lovers' dream, a notebook with three separate list sections for home, work and play. I like to cross items off, rewrite lists and empty my mind in lists. Lists help to contain information, give all of the many things I want to remember a place to sit, and give a sense of control over my thoughts. So it was on Sunday night, after spending two nights at my friends' house, my brain in a frenzy as I tried to go to bed, that I wrote lists. I wrote:

These were some of the signs (of support, of encouragement, of reminders, of right thinking):
A card from my church Secret Sister on a gift that had been shuffled around for over a week and in different cars to get to me, and happened finally to be delivered on Thursday night, the night I found out. The card read on the front, "Alexa Believe in Yourself."

Michael was out of town on a business trip so I had time and space to figure out what to do.

The Friday newspaper on Alissa's driveway (Alissa is our daycare provider), which has never been in the driveway in the 8 months Asher and Harper have gone to Alissa's, read on the front page, "Christian Band Coming to Niwot." The band wasn't "The Fray," but I was reminded of them immediately.

I had therapy scheduled for Friday morning, an appointment I made three weeks ago.

The Lowe's were home and available (not often the case) so I could stay with them and cry with them over the weekend.

The "Quotes of the Day" for Friday was on "Grandfathers" (my Grandfather Harper is a family rock).

The speech at the Chamber's Friday annual membership luncheon was about the future, about the energy a dysfunctional member of a family or organization takes and the power of making new choices.

Driving home from Fort Collins, anticipating seeing Michael for the first time since Thursday and feeling anxious, alone, my mom called and then Megan called without prompting from me.

When I got home on Sunday, there was a James Avery jewelry catalog in the stack of mail, a reminder of last Christmas when Michael bought a suspicious gift from the company.

This was what I knew by Friday, clearly delineated like a snowflake on a black glove:

• I had to go away for the weekend and be with close friends.
• I had to call friends, my mom and sisters.
• Michael had to move out.
• I had to refile separation paperwork.
• I can not be with Michael (God knows for how long, possibly forever). It hurts to be in the same room with him.
• God can see down the line, and He's showing me a small part of the line part by part (go to the Lowe's, Michael move out, file paperwork).
  

This is what I feel:

• A door closed like I'd been waiting for this to walk through my house, and when it did, I would let it in and then close out its future.
• Anger
• Relief because what I knew to be true was, what I had dreamed was.
• Sadness
• The tree continuing to live, God's hand feeding it with sun and water and emergency gardeners.
• All this is not about me and Michael together but about me and Michael individually, apart.
  
• Disbelief
• A heavily residing pain that feels like it will never get better, though I know His faithfulness.

This is what I did Sunday night, back in my bed, Asher breathing quietly by my side, Michael's king size moved out:
I slept

soundly

peacefully

for the first time in two months.

Connecting

My three-year-old son has decided that he absolutely will not sleep in his own bed - not even one hour at night while Michael and I get settled in. His list of reasons is quite long. His bed is too cold. Harper will wake him up. It's too dark, and he can't see his hands (the measure of darkness in all rooms). He doesn't like his bed. Fortunately, Michael brought back to our house with him a California king (since when is California associated with bigger? It should be a Texas king) sized bed, and we all sleep quite comfortably. I'm even dreaming again.

Monday night, I had a long dream about meeting up with a number of friends from high school, the last of whom I probably saw in 1995. I can't think of any thought or incident that contributed to this dream. A funny thing happened Tuesday. I was at a meeting with a friend, Scott Lowe, and while I was giving some information and dates to another friend, Amy Henson, Scott convinced me to sign up for a Facebook account. I was reluctant. I had ignored an invitation from Gillian to join, and I really don't need another website posting to keep up with. Scott showed me a friend's page who had over 600 friends listed on his page! Such pressure to have lots and lots of friends.

And then I did it, added my high school name and graduation year and BOOM! in five minutes found a page listing about fifteen of my high school classmates and within ten minutes I had made a friends with one of them.

This was a surprisingly exciting experience - to reconnect with and see pictures of long lost friends. It was exhilarating! I was laughing slightly hysterically as Scott drove back to my house. It was also a little scary. What if all the invitations I sent to old friends were rejected? Was my dream a premonition?

And so it is that I think about connections - our drive to connect to others, the fear of connecting, the fear of not connecting, the rejection when someone refuses a connection, the confusion when a connection is garbled - and about how people stayed connected before the Internet, the loss of connections when mail was delivered by horse and written with pen and paper and the importance of a central meeting place. I find my electronic connections and correspondences more interesting (perhaps less exhilarating - Facebook connections are like a quick high) than Facebook for they certainly have more depth. But Facebook provides an interesting international marketplace where we can run into old friends, even if it's just to give them a Facebook "poke," and connect friends from different reaches of the planet with each other.

Denial. Part Deux.

So, all things considered, denial served me quite well last weekend in getting through the ramp up to Megan moving. Of course, as I hugged her good bye at the security line, we both burst into tears. I cried all the way home and throughout the day. I could cry right now if I thought about her absence too much.

With the comments I received on denial, I thought more about denial this week. Like anything, there are definitely abuses of denial (proverbial ostrich with his head buried in the ground), but denial also serves an incredible purpose. Unlike animals, we have the great gift of the knowledge of mortality (our lives, things in our lives) and pain. We can experience pleasure and joy with the golden lens of denial. We also have an ability to split our thinking, an ability to find pleasure and joy even in the midst of pain and death.

I have spent three days at home with sick children - both had colds. Dear Harper got a brief stomach virus, and poor Asher came down with a nasty case of croup. So it has been three days of tending to poorly feeling children and dealing with the special circumstances of illness (whining, incomprehension of not being able to eat when hungry, many tears, refusal of medicine, both children wanting to be held - incidentally, I do not know how a mother of more than two children does it! - all day long, sore arms and sore wrists from carrying children around, little sleep and worry), which combined with all the other life events has brought on a feeling of utter chaos. Yet, as I drove to the office this morning for a much needed break, I thought about the Balinese medicine man in Eat, Pray, Love and his instruction to meditate with a smile, even to smile in your liver. And I could somewhat, smile even in my liver while my shoulders felt tired from carrying around this week.

I have recently been thinking about the divine and how we connect to the divine. Pascal writes about how man is in some way part divine and part human - that some part of us is indeed in the image of God, that close to the divine. I have been ruminating on the Yogic idea of the divine in us. I was impressed while studying Euclid and Plato in college that there is some part of us that knows of divine things - perfect circles, true love, perfect parents, parallel lines - of which we have no physical experience. Only an ideal. Denial, then, seems like knowledge of the divine (and a glimpse of heaven), connection with an ideal that things should not be the way they are - friends and family should not be far away, we should not die, there should be no pain. We should always be smiling in our liver.

Denial.

Tomorrow, Saturday, October 27, at 11:40 a.m. a close friend, Megan, will, barring a freak snow storm (please, please, please!) depart from Denver International Airport for Nashville, TN where she will return home, unpack her belongings and settle back into life in the historic town of Franklin. She will be, even with a cell phone, e-mail, instant messenger and cheap flights, far, far away.

To date, except for a few damn bursts (need more fingers! Damn bursts!), I have done quite well at denying the reality of this event. My mind has been so plogged (v. to struggle to work against a plug or obtrusion like a cog machine struggling against misplaced Play-Doh) that I have raged at Michael for reasons not related to my true mental ailment, lost the use of much English language and gained a propensity to make up words (deny reality and the reality of words fades) and been quite unable to plan anything for about the last week, including a good bye reception for Megan that was amazingly whipped together in an hour and a half from store to set up (including a stop at daycare to pick up two worn out kids and included a well executed curtsy).

I know I am on the verge of climbing a cold, leafless tree in the middle of a golden plain, but until then, I will deny the event and enjoy the last hours with her (party at my house!). Soon, I will not only recognize my denial but let it subside and remember fondly the prayers that started it all, the pits and apexes, the new found places in my heart . . . fade into denial.

Perhaps denial is not all bad, it is after all "an unconscious defense mechanism used to reduce anxiety by denying thoughts, feelings, or facts that are consciously intolerable." (American Heritage Dictionary) And this is, after all, consciously intolerable.

Chalepa ta Kala.

In Hippias Major, Plato claims, "Chalepa ta kala." Beauty is difficult. Of all things Platonic and Socratic, this is a phrase that has stuck with me over the last year or so, turning up in my thoughts here and there. I am at the beginning of Eat, Pray, Love by E. Gilbert, a book passionately recommended to me by my friend Megan. In the Eat section, E. is in Italy, dedicating four months to the pleasure of eating and the Italian language. Her enjoyment, letting in of pleasure as Puritan-ethic raised American living in pleasurable Italy, has me thinking again about pleasure and beauty.

Plato is attempting to define beauty in Hippias Major - whether it is a personal experience or something inherent in an object. Thus, the difficulty. But there is more in this idea of beauty being difficult. I thought at one point that Plato meant beauty is difficult to find (I concluded that it's not, really) and further down the rabbit hole that beauty is difficult to experience. Chalepa can be translated "hard to bear, painful, sore, grievous." There is something threatening, perhaps, in a beautiful man. There is something disconcerting in a beautiful moment because we risk being undone, risk entering something beautiful to not too soon later run across something hideous. Beauty can seem ethereal and fleeting. Some things are so beautiful I cry. Perhaps, as E. discovers in Italy, we do not learn along with everything else in school and life how to experience, to bear, to be in the presence of beauty.

In my Internet search about Plato's quote, I found a book review of "The Uncertainty Principle of Beauty" claiming that for 20 centuries between Plato and Kant, the study of beauty was a signature concern of philosophy. Recently, however, beauty has largely been dropped from the philosophical curriculum." For Plato, unlike Kant who became increasingly mistrustful of passion, beauty was inseparable from eros. Not only did our collective concept of beauty lose passion, but our philosophy has lost a passion for beauty.

This brings me to last Friday. After work, I picked up the kids from Ms. Alisa's and headed up to Fort Collins to meet Michael and to see Amy and Scott Lowe and their kids, Davis and Ella. Taking the Lowe's exit from I-25 and driving along the frontage road in our rattling geriatric Volvo, we were hit by the glorious orange light of a fall evening. Five for Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" was playing from my newly restored iPod, and I was so easily reminded of a football awards show post-9/11 with this song playing in the background. I cried then for the seeming loss of American innocence. I smiled this last Friday about how many of us feel like inadequate but still flying heroes. I looked in my rearview mirror to see Harper looking out the window, endearing with her newly formed wispy Mohawk and apple pieces all over her face and chest. Not to be upstaged by anything, Asher continued his mono/dialogue with me. "Davis is a boy not a man." Pause. "I'm right!" Pause. "There's the mountains." And there they were - so clear on this evening, the folds and dives distinct even in the distance. God granted me stillness, a pause to feel the beauty of this moment surrounded by light, mountains, my children. In so many ways I felt like I was taking a battered and strengthened woman, a woman with renewed passions and vision for pleasure and beauty to my husband and close friends. It is fall, a time to pause for such things as the trees demand us with their color.

Like many things we learn and perspire for, I am beginning to think that experiencing beauty and pleasure - especially for many of us Americans who grew up with the Puritan work ethic - takes some working out. I have to be aware of this muscle and take moments to flex it. It also takes some redefining. Beauty is not necessarily in those things that cost money, contrary to POPular opinion. Beauty is an equal opportunity commodity (thank God because I just heard this morning that the top 1% of our country's richest people made 21% of the country's income last year). Beauty is an intrinsic part of God and his creation.

Preparing dinner last night for my family, sister and brother-in-law and Megan, I was chopping vegetables for a Greek salad. In my haste and also anticipation of cleaning up (efficiency, efficiency), I thought about putting the salad in an ugly plastic tub that I could easily seal with a lid. Inspired by "Eat, Pray, Love" to think about what would be beautiful and pleasurable, I pulled down a nicely shaped white bowl that Michael purchased when he moved into his apartment. The bowl was cool and fit nicely in my hands. I transferred the cucumbers and red tomatoes. The salad looked beautiful.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bath

Apparently, my dear children have both reached interesting stages of development, which combined, can make for the most ridiculous situations. Asher has hit the three's, which, in his case, is turning out to be worse that then two's with lots of whining, much upset over being told "no" (about anything, even having a whole banana versus a half) and a great need for mom (no doubt part of the battle between establishing independence and still needing to have many needs met by us parents). Harper will be 16 months old on October 1, and while her stage does not include the adolescent-like moodiness of a three year old, there is much noise and some frustration as she struggles with knowing she can communicate and move around but lacks some of the skill to achieve her self-imagined potential.

So Tuesday night, I made a valiant attempt to get both my children in the bath before bed and their respective stages collided. They were in desperate need of cleaning as I had forgotten the last time they had a bath (a few days) and both had been happily playing in the dirt-filled kiddie pool turned massive mud puddle in our backyard before dinner. I announced happily, as dinner was wrapping up, "After Harper finishes up, it's bath time." There were some protests from Asher because it wasn't his idea, but before I could get Harper out of his chair, Asher had removed his diaper (dinner's clothing included his diaper and socks as I had stripped him after the mud puddle fun). While Asher tromped around the house with the air of a triumphant, naked boy, I corralled Harper into the bathroom with some wipes to clean her poopy bottom before getting in the bath. With much squirming and protesting grunts from her, I finally had her clean but the bath mat was much the worse for wear.

Returning to the bathroom after tossing her diaper and washing my hands, I asked Asher to try to remove his socks. "Dare duck, Mom," he announced after tugging at them lightly while standing up. Urging him to try again, he replied, "Look, Mom, dare's poop on da floor." I peered into the small bathroom to discover a nicely laid, three inch turd on the floor and Asher still in his socks. Oh-so-calmly I replied, "So there is. Do you want to sit on your potty?" Asher, squatting close to his poop and peering at it so inquisitively, replied "What color is it, Mom?" Answering his question nonchalantly, I stuck one arm out to grab Harper as she made a mad toddler dash to join Asher and another arm out to pull his training potty into the bathroom. Harper squealed as I removed her from the site of this intriguing scene and carried her with me to get the child's gate. The children obviously needed to be locked up (or was that me? I would later wonder). Asher proudly sat on his potty, asking for a book and his helicopter. Harper screamed in great protest, grabbing the gate and attempting to keep it from going up as I struggled and finally succeded in getting the gate situtated in the bathroom doorway. I scooped up the poop with a plastic bag and went back to the kitchen for disinfecting wipes.

During my trips back and forth to the kitchen, Harper kept up a constant running, flapping and protest grunting routine, running between the bathroom and the kitchen, between me and Asher. She was, quite clearly, very offended at being locked out. On one of my returns to the bathroom, I found a nice puddle outside the gate where Harper had briefly stood nd attempted to pull Asher's hair. Back to the kitchen for a towel I went, followed quickly by a "phalump. " I turned to find Harper, having run after me with wet feet, sprawled on the floor. I picked her up and mopped the floor as I comforted her. Somewhere, deep inside, I realized that the situation was becoming critical. We weren't just talking messes here, we were talking bodily injury! Yet, I charged on.

Asher was done sitting, having produced nothing more for him to admire. I cleaned up any remnants on the bathroom floor and training potty and started to run the bath water. Back to the beginning of this scene, it was again time for Asher to take his socks off. I urged him to attempt this on his own. He obediently sat on the floor and started lightly tugging on the toe of one sock. Making no progress he complained loudly, "Can't do it, Momma. Help me." He shifted where he was sitting on the floor, and I tried to guide him in hooking his finger on the back of the sock and pulling it over his heel. My gentle instruction was met with, "Look, Mom. More poop. " Pause. "What color is it?" I had one child, one floor and one potty nicely cleaned but had neglected to clean the other child's bottom. "You've got to be kidding me," I said out loud, shut the water off and set Harper in the tub in less than an inch of water. "Don't touch it," I toldAsher and got him to stand up, away from the poop. "Why, Mom?" he answered. "What color is it?" he asked again. "Brown," I replied and headed back to the kitcehn for another disinfecting wipe.

As I come back into the bathroom, my dear girl was standing in the tub and then, quick as an oiled pig, "phalump," on her back, screaming. I dropped the cleaner, grabbed a towel and lifted Harper out to comfort her as I cleaned up the very last remnants on the floor and Asher. With almost hysterical laughter, what a feat this was.

Finally, finally, with all the bottoms cleaned, the usually neglected bathroom floor clean enough to serve a meal on, Asher's stubborn socks off, both kids were happily playing in the bath tub. It's so funny what goes through our head during these moments - questions about what is the best cleaner to use, where the cleaner is, how best to lock up a child, whether the next best step in a series of critical moments is to set my baby girl in a bit of water, lug her around with me or let her indulge her curiosity and why I chose the first option. There is much here about life, but, most importantly to me, how critical it is to be in the moment, to watch my children's developing abilities and figure out - even with the heat of disbelieving frustration and hysteria - how to react when everything starts to fall apart.

September's Caterpillars

I was reading in bed Monday night, finishing the third book in a series about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire (a nice vampire, of course. Who knew? A fun read - The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer). The end of the third book was sad, and I was somewhat ruffled. And then, all of a sudden, I was really ruffled, sobbing heavily. Ten days into September, this contentious month ambushed me. Tuesday was one of those days where I had to concentrate most of the day on holding myself together because the slightest breeze would blow away my leaves.

As much as I want to chalk it up to the book, to a theme of struggling with love and loving like your life depends on it, to missing Michael (he's out of town, and this is the first time I've missed his presence in some time), to fatigue, I had to admit it was more than that. Ten years ago, I attended a conference, which was in most regards quite useless and scary (scary in the overly conservative, Christian way), the speaker talked about our life cycles. When we experience good or bad things in our lives, those times of the year may echo that experience in later years. Perhaps it's really a mark on our soul and energy. Perhaps our unconscious is triggered by dates or weather or how the light looks at certain times of the year. Perhaps our memories are linked strongly to the calendar. In any case, September is one of those times of year for me.

Six years ago, I was turning on the radio in our apartment after a walk in Riverside Park in Manhattan with Michael on a beautiful early fall day when the events of 9/11 happened. I wasn't at the Trade Center (Michael was the day before). I didn't know anyone who was killed (though, working in Manhattan, it was one degree of separation, and many days I could hear at work, "Did you hear from her/him yet?"). I did see people and cars covered with the dust, have my school and work closed down for security, saw bus stops and walls covered with missing persons flyers and make shift alters under those flyers. I attended a staff meeting of all college staff and listened to one of the maintenance workers talk about his friends who died at the Trade Center, friends he used to work with there. Michael and I went to a peace rally with friends in Union Square, a quiet (in NYC) gathering. We carved messages on a large piece of metal, and, when it was dark, walked as far south as we could go before the street closures. We could see the continuing smoke, lit yellow by the search lights. For many weeks after 9/11, the subway trains were strangely quiet, the riders carefully tucked into their thoughts and grief. There was tangible grief for concrete individuals and for something ethereal, a sense that something in our lives had ended.

Closely following those events, I spiraled into a depression, the first symptom of which was an inability to read (which, if you know me, is unheard of - I HAVE to read). My depression lasted through the end of my graduate work, a move to Alabama, a month of living with in-laws, a move to Mississippi, a temp job at WorldCom (aka corporate hell), a job search and starting a new job until I started medication. For months, I pulled myself up by my boot strings.

Three years ago on September 17, my sister's boyfriend, Tim Griffith, was murdered. I was nine months pregnant, and my mom called our house. There was something funny in her voice, a forced calm, and she asked to talk to Michael. She told him the news, afraid to tell me. Tim had gone to a Giants' baseball game, his first night out after getting off house arrest, a young man sober after struggling with a drug addiction. He and his friends were walking back to their car after the game, and Tim brushed a car parked on the street. A group of young men got out of the car, and attacked Tim and his friends. Tim died at the hospital from a stab wound. My sister was at a horse show in southern California. Less than a week later, my sister returned from Iraq, relieving an enormous weight and a year of jumping when the phone rang at strange hours. It was bittersweet. My dear nephew, who had lived with us, become a surrogate son, rearranged our childless married lives would return to his mother shortly.

One year ago on September 2, my Executive Director's son died in a swimming accident. Things between Michael and me really started to fall apart, and I grieved for my boss alone when I heard the news at church. I took off my wedding ring that month.

There are two huge, bright, anchoring events that occurred on September 23, 2004 - my beautiful son was born - and September 24, 2005 - I found out I was pregnant with Harper the day after finishing a half marathon.

So it is that the date and memory of September 11, 2001 brings up intense memories of Manhattan on that day and an all too public representation of the trials of September and of the beginning of six years when life, a reconstructed life full of adventure and love and discovery, slowly started to be eaten away like a poplar set upon by leaf-eating caterpillars. Infestations usually aren't fatal, but successive years of attack can weaken a tree enough to kill it; and, certainly, ignoring the caterpillars, letting them move in without protest, finding small cracks to hide in from storms is a faster way to go. Somehow, I have to help these caterpillars methamorphose and fly away so the leaves can regrow. So September can be a time for fall, recovery and leaves full of fire.