Metta meditation

It's funny how people in movies struggle with the words I love you. The hardest three to me are these: You hurt me. They're the ones I don't say when I snap. The ones that get tucked under snarky jokes, pointed opinions, my calling out your behavior. I suspect I'm not alone in this. And perhaps this is why I find it somewhat easy to forgive--or at least recognize--it in others. When you lash out, there's a chance it comes from a place that has nothing to do with whatever exchange we're having in the moment.

Tending to another person's visible wounds is obvious, instinctive. These cuts, though, are mine. They sting and make me coil away from the people that rendered them. I don't call even when I know I should. I don't want to pretend nothing's wrong when your words still hurt. We laughed them off, and to them it's forgotten.

To me, it's a lifetime of hearing that I didn't matter all that much, wasn't noticed. Who wants to be told, after all, that their childhood--that time in life when people are the most lovable--was almost entirely overlooked? (Your daughter really reminds me of your brother. You? Hmm, we don't remember anything about you honestly. She's just like you when she cries, does that help?) Ask my brother, and he'll tell you a different story. I was spoiled, never corrected, never told what to do. (Though maybe the freedom that comes from being overlooked is a kind of spoiling, a chance to grow ignored and unfettered. Parenting thoughts for a different day.)

But I digress. These comments have flown at me through the years. The specifics don't matter. I realize these are universal problems. Or non-problems. Each of us, my family included, have their own stories of hurtful words flung at them. In the big world, these things are trivial. I know I am loved in some way. I know I can go home to them. I can be kind to them. How do I deal with the words though?

You might say I should let them slide. But they slide under my skin and wedge there like thorns. Every move pricks with the reminder that I am insignificant, unnoticed. If I pluck them out, where do I put them? They can't be returned, for they'd only hurt the people who said them instead. They can't be unharnessed to fly into the world out of context, where they'd be turned into caricature or cliche in some comedian's skit about Indian parents.

I could hold them here in my skin, let time stitch scars over them and make the hurt my own. Trouble is, I don't want to be that person who holds these things as part of my story. I may have been unnoticed, but I choose to believe I was loved. I want to be kind to myself. Pick the barbs out, soothe flesh and stanch blood. I want to pick the phone up and call them without hiding hurt. I want to practice metta. But I don't know how.

I turn the word over in my mind. Loving-kindness. Metta, over and over until it morphs into other things. The words for earth in Hindi. Earth where you can bury anything: thorn, seed, carcass. Not everything grows in the earth. Most turns to soil. Hidden, unnoticed, it all turns to mud. Perhaps this is how I learn to be kind to myself. Yes, I am hurt. Your comments hurt me. I will let them sink deep, rest untended. In time they will crumble. Sentences will become words, letters, shapes, squiggles, until they lose all meaning, until they are no more than rich new earth.

Affirmation

6:30 am in mid-September means dawn is grey-black, sluggish like my body. Yesterday a friend 12 years older than I commiserated over email about how our limbs cling to weight as we age.
What is it that makes it hard to let go?

I think about this when I pull clumps of hair out the drain, wrap strands gathered off the floor around my fingers, a few grays mixed in now. I was born with a single gray hair -- a sign of great intelligence, or that my mother loves me deeply. Or just the obvious, that our bodies were never perfect. The rest of this mane was once a source of pride, my connection to Jo March and writerly ambitions and independent womanhood growing up. Now I ignore the grays on the floor and my scalp. They're part of what remains -- and the loss of each strand, black or gray, is muted yet present.

I think about this as I step into my daughter's room. She refuses to sleep there, so we moved her bed into ours. This room with its pink pom-poms on the ceiling, stacks of toys and books on the walls is mine for now. The cotton-ball bunny she made at daycare for Easter is still clipped on a string, googly eyes watching my neck, arms, legs, creak through these morning stretches.

It's easier than usual to focus today, though harder than it used to be. I think about what to pack for her lunch. Bring my attention back to the crick in my neck when I lean. I didn't realize my right calf was tight. The left hip pain I thought was gone is still here, pushing through when I dip into the first bend of the day. I face the east, the sky lightens. The neighbor's tree blocks their view of me. I wonder if they planted it for this privacy. I wonder if the girl who grew up in this room leaned out this window at night and watched the moon.

Bring my attention back. Lift my feet against the wall, invert into a shoulder stand. I've never felt my shoulders shake like this before. I cannot do another inversion. What am I afraid of? There is no one to see me fall, a carpet to soften the landing. But heart and body refuse to release something, and today is not my day to float on my fingers.

What is my intention here? Yoga instructors love affirmations. But my mind is on full moons and little girls and Friday the 13th and remembering how my 70-year-old father lifts his hips effortlessly into a shoulder stand and once-upon-a-time-dances and no, I cannot find a positive thought to focus on.

There is only this. This racing breath in a lightening room and this body that bends. Creaking, fearful, but still moving. And for today, this is affirmation enough. That my limbs and lungs still move air, and over and over with each movement we make breath, and making breath is making life.
And if life itself can be made anew each instant, what is there to hold on to? What is it we fear to let go?

Listen, just listen

When the two-year-old says she's missing her friends from her old school. When she says she doesn't want to go to school. When she says she's upset that mama has to go to work. When she cries even as her new teacher hugs her.

I miss them. I'm upset. I'm sad. I was naughty. 

I can hold her entire body in my arms, but her words stretch the edges of my heart. I fumble and stutter. I know you miss them, but we had to move because you needed to learn new things. It'll get better. You know mama always comes for you, don't you? But you like Miss R. She looks away and goes quiet, and I know it's still on her mind. I wonder what her teens will be like. And recall writing in my diary as a fifteen-year-old words I could never get my mother to understand: Listen, just listen. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me why. Don't tell me to get over it.  Just listen. Tonight, I'll try just that, with my old voice and hers.

Book, marked.

Embrace.
Tent.
Knife.
Light.
Mile marker.
Foothold.
Straw.
Tattoo.

- A swift sampling.
Stories are more than words.
The things we make with words grow beyond themselves.
They take flight, slice wounds, wrap hearts safe.
If your words formed a sculpture, what shape would they take?
If your story were an animal, would it stomp, hop, or run?
What song would keep pace with its rhythm?

Simple time

Last December the curry leaf plant shoved a new sprig out in our massive hallway, but it shriveled soon after. I've swept a small shrub's worth of leaves off the floor in the months since. Each day it looks a little sicker. Today, though, its browning leaves seemed a touch brighter when I moved the blinds. The little Monstera has a new leaf. Daffodils I forgot in the car two days ago decided to open up anyway.

Surrounded by brick and drywall, encased in plastic, far from tropical warmth and the invisible rhythm of the spinning planet, plants still keep time to the seasons. This is houseplant magic: A promise that like the plants, we who live by alarms and in too-bright nights can still keep wordless, peaceful pace with the world beyond.

Claiming ground

The snow still falls, all day sometimes. But the earth is warm, and green sprouts are pushing out, and the cold melts to slake their thirst. Our first daffodil bloomed the day before the last round of snow. There's something unusually special about the first flower on a patch of the earth that's all your own (okay, mostly the bank's, but still, you know what I mean).

The day after, my daughter smashed a pink ball into one of my favorite plants. It destroyed a large leaf, and it might be one of the few times I've truly scolded her. She's not quite two, and still learning to be gentle. She hugged the plant and tried to stick it back. Some things aren't fixed that way, I told her.

My mother laughed when I told her this. She's the best thing you are growing, she said. But I still care about my plant! And she needs to learn, I reply. Then I hear she's struggling to sit quietly at daycare. She won't listen, they tell me. She ignores us when we tell her that if she can't sit for lunch, we'll move the chair away. She pulls a drawer out on the play kitchen and tries to climb to the top of the toy. She never sits still for class photos, her curls a flying blurry backdrop to the row of smiling faces in the messages I get.

I'm upset by this. If she can't listen, if she can't hold still, how will she learn, I wonder? How can she grow into the person I know she will be? How will her brain absorb words and facts and imagine great things? They tell me about sensory toys and hidden ADHD. She's not yet TWO, my brain yells.

A year ago she couldn't walk yet. She is finding her feet, her limbs, her voice. Let her climb. Let her fall. If it were a tree you'd be thrilled at her "exploring nature". Let her flail and yell and stomp and learn. Let her discover how she can stretch, how strong she is. Let her topple the toys, rake the earth, climb the tables, turn this strange earthly social structure we've planted her into. Let her stand and eat lunch. Let her dig and splash and watch soil turn dark as snow melts to water. Let her learn how to push her own growing tips through the spaces around her. Let her bloom.

Moving on

Because sometimes rolling like a stone is an act of artistry. To lumber past the links that annoy, the photos that trigger, the words that trip your brain into an eruption of punctuation that clamors to be turned into words. Browsing the internet-- watching friends, reading for work, researching your toddler's suspicious rash-- each tap of my fingers requires conscious, constant restraint. How do I choose when to engage?

Yesterday, a woman declaring her thrill at meeting an anti-vaxxer in a moms group that bans vaccine discussions. I stepped in, asked that her post be removed. Today, a woman writing about her experience at a strip club: she was young and didn't know where to look, unsure what to do in the presence of her male co-workers and a mid-forties mother of two. I want to ask- what relevance does the other woman's age or maternal status have to your discomfort? Are older mothers less embarrassed, less likely to be sexually assaulted? I move on. The outlet isn't one I'm interested in, though our writing group where she shared her work is. 

I don't always choose wisely. I engage more than I should, snarl more than is smart, and could afford to be kinder, online and offline. Perhaps it's the sharp sounds of my fingers on the keys, the way they strike in clacks and taps and thwacks. Would a soft-touch keypad make me kinder? In lieu of browsing Amazon or Google Scholar, I look away for a minute.

Outside the world is green and blue and sun and wind. Frost on grass flashes light like gemstones. A brown leaf taps to the rhythm of the wind, soft under the twigs of a shrub poised to bloom, come spring. The breeze is soft. There are no leaves to be ruffled. And for the span of a few minutes, it makes me less confused. There is nothing to clatter about here. No clamor to still, no outrage to quell. It's just a backyard going about the work of growth and death and the spaces between. I linger, my chaos of words and deadlines quelled in watching this patch of the planet at work.

Moving on is an act of conscious grace. Each minute a choice-- of when to move on, when to linger and engage.

Why this blog

This blog will be thirteen years old in 2019. No wonder it's been a little confused, surly and quiet around here lately. At a writing workshop this weekend, I mentioned it to a mentor who pushes me to grow in ways I didn't know I needed. 

She was full of questions I'd never fully considered: Why is it anonymous? Why isn't it invite-only, as opposed to private (something a passing onlooker might stumble on)? What do you write? Do you name people? How many readers do you have? Her asking raised more of my own: Why don't I talk to people about this blog? Why don't I polish these posts some more? Why do I keep it up, when I haven't written in months that creep into years? 

This blog is more process than product. I don't write with a reader in mind here, most times. I tweak a line here or there when I like, and leave it if I'm lazy. You're welcome to linger and read if you like. Move along if it irks you. I don't track who stops by (and at some point, I'll mess around with the template enough to remove the defunct counter on the front page). I love the care and comments of anyone who reads. But I don't want these words found by someone googling "my name + blog" because they want a peek into a private space. 

There's a sense of closure to putting the words "out there"- where isn't as important as being out--out of my head, heart, fingers. Into a format and space that's different from what I use for work. Some posts are good, some aren't. I can never be sure where a pointless ramble will lead. This blog is perhaps my version of the pathless woods. I stay away for months, visit when I feel like it, forget the woods exist until I crave them again. These trees are not timber or furniture or firewood. This is space to wander, and remember how to walk, and wonder at the feel of the world around me. 

Everything here is me trying to make sense of something in the bigger world. Sometimes I find that sense in this forest of words.