I'm really lonely tonight. It's been a busy week, and I miss Nora.
"My true self needs a soundtrack." That's what the commercial on Pandora just told me. Maybe he's right. Maybe my true self DOES need a soundtrack. But what? The Bangles? Sheila E.?
Earlier I watched a documentary about opera singer Barbara Smith. She talked about owning the person inside your body THROUGH your body, "Stand tall, girl. No leaning over."
Yard work tonight: Gas mower = 0. Push mower = 1.
Today: 1 loaf banana bread, 3 dozen oatmeal cookies, 10 pints of salsa, 2 loads of laundry. I'm not a mathematician, but when you add all of that together, you get, like, a really big number.
Our play: mountain lions who live on piles of pillows climbing to the top to ward off stampedes and wild boars. Barbies who do laundry and care for sick deer while sending Ken to Orsheln's for rock salt for the soft water system and deer cough syrup.
Telling the big tom cat to move along if he thinks he can bully the kittens. Staring contest commences. Tom Cat = 0. Me = 1. Kittens = 3.
And I'm bushed. Night folks!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Gillian Welch with the Gals--I'm so tired right now, I'm hoping this picture says it all:
I've got so much to say about cowboy hats and security guys and blue moons and hearing songs you sing in your kitchen, but this time it's not a recording. It's got so much real life in it, you've got to stop to remember to breathe. I don't even dream nights like this.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Don't Worry: We've Been Doing this for a Really Long Time
I picked up my first guitar when I was 11 months old. My first concert was in '74 -- Bob Dylan. I had my first record deal with Columbia House when I was 12. Apparently, for one penny, I could order as many as 8 cassette tapes and all I had to do was buy at least two more tapes within the next two years at regular club price plus shipping. I had no idea at the time that it cost almost 75 bucks to ship a tape.
Tomorrow night, some friends and I are heading to the Rococco to see Gillian Welch. In honor of all those gals out there who have been picking and singing and changing diapers and feeding hungry men and working full time and sneaking softly plucked songs during naptime and packing stadiums:
Tomorrow night, some friends and I are heading to the Rococco to see Gillian Welch. In honor of all those gals out there who have been picking and singing and changing diapers and feeding hungry men and working full time and sneaking softly plucked songs during naptime and packing stadiums:
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Songs to Bring the Moon Down into the Palm of Your Eyes
She is singing about her sweet adversary, and there are bells calling her voice out from some wilderness she grew around the base of her life to keep her safe from everything harmless, anything too comfortable, whatever fed the complacency of warmth and languor and safety.
She grows sleepy by the fire, so she walks out to the fields pulling a thin gray sweater around her curved shoulders while the moon slips behind velvet colored clouds. She frames the moon when it appears again between a screen of alfalfa while she watches from her back. No girls have been afraid to wander after midnight while the house slept safe just to hear the sound of wind rearranging leaves into secret patterns of night and shade.
You could go whole days without saying, not even chewing gum because it was "too fun."
Strawberries: too delicious. Friends: too dangerous. Love: too hopeless.
How you have grown brave, little dear. I was afraid for you, but you let yourself say what made you angry, what made you hurt, and then all love was possible because you weren't afraid to feel.
And if you can't break, what good are you to fix? And it is in the fixing that you learn what love is. Allow yourself to be mended, stood upright and sent out again, a soldier, a song, a sight, a sound, a silent word daring to breathe the white circle, the surprised vowel.
She grows sleepy by the fire, so she walks out to the fields pulling a thin gray sweater around her curved shoulders while the moon slips behind velvet colored clouds. She frames the moon when it appears again between a screen of alfalfa while she watches from her back. No girls have been afraid to wander after midnight while the house slept safe just to hear the sound of wind rearranging leaves into secret patterns of night and shade.
You could go whole days without saying, not even chewing gum because it was "too fun."
Strawberries: too delicious. Friends: too dangerous. Love: too hopeless.
How you have grown brave, little dear. I was afraid for you, but you let yourself say what made you angry, what made you hurt, and then all love was possible because you weren't afraid to feel.
And if you can't break, what good are you to fix? And it is in the fixing that you learn what love is. Allow yourself to be mended, stood upright and sent out again, a soldier, a song, a sight, a sound, a silent word daring to breathe the white circle, the surprised vowel.
Monday, October 10, 2011
More Maya
Touched by an Angel
Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Surprise! Sunday!
Just praying from one moment to the next to refrain from "busy-ness" and do the work in my hands from one moment to the next mindfully and meaningfully.
Not making it to church again. Nora watches Josh and the Big Wall while I study solitary but wanting and needing that community.
Freezing the last of the the gifts of God's garden. I watch the squirrels gathering beneath the trees, and I'm suddenly imagining their little miniature deep freezes tucked somewhere inside the trees. That probably explains the bright orange extension cord running from my garage to the pin oak out back.
Taking Nora to Goehner so she can ride around on the blacktop at the park. We pass the trains at the museum in town, and they're running. I turn the car around, and before we know it, we're balancing on miniature trains riding around in the gray changing skies with 4 grown men dressed as conductors and feeding the trains coal. I'll try to get some pictures next Sunday. You won't believe it.
Getting rained on while at the playground and visiting a friend who offers her abundance of apples. We laugh about excessive gardening ambition and how hard it is to plant a smaller garden. Hope lives.
Loving all the friends in my life and all the weird, wonderful, honest, brave adventures they're having. You. I'm talking to you.
Barbies out on the living room floor. Henrietta and Lucky enjoying clean digs. Nora drawing fat, blue kitties on the bathtub wall with her bath crayons. A rough draft getting clearer. Facing my own fear of writing and communication, and grateful for the reminder of what I put my students through several times a semester. Yes, this does take courage. Courage. Courage. COURAGE! There. Got it.
The rain waiting long enough for Mike to get his beans in. Mom in her studio throwing pots all day long.
And while I regret not seeing so many people in the flesh, I'm thankful for language, so we can touch base here and there and here again.
Love,
Lisa
Not making it to church again. Nora watches Josh and the Big Wall while I study solitary but wanting and needing that community.
Freezing the last of the the gifts of God's garden. I watch the squirrels gathering beneath the trees, and I'm suddenly imagining their little miniature deep freezes tucked somewhere inside the trees. That probably explains the bright orange extension cord running from my garage to the pin oak out back.
Taking Nora to Goehner so she can ride around on the blacktop at the park. We pass the trains at the museum in town, and they're running. I turn the car around, and before we know it, we're balancing on miniature trains riding around in the gray changing skies with 4 grown men dressed as conductors and feeding the trains coal. I'll try to get some pictures next Sunday. You won't believe it.
Getting rained on while at the playground and visiting a friend who offers her abundance of apples. We laugh about excessive gardening ambition and how hard it is to plant a smaller garden. Hope lives.
Loving all the friends in my life and all the weird, wonderful, honest, brave adventures they're having. You. I'm talking to you.
Barbies out on the living room floor. Henrietta and Lucky enjoying clean digs. Nora drawing fat, blue kitties on the bathtub wall with her bath crayons. A rough draft getting clearer. Facing my own fear of writing and communication, and grateful for the reminder of what I put my students through several times a semester. Yes, this does take courage. Courage. Courage. COURAGE! There. Got it.
The rain waiting long enough for Mike to get his beans in. Mom in her studio throwing pots all day long.
And while I regret not seeing so many people in the flesh, I'm thankful for language, so we can touch base here and there and here again.
Love,
Lisa
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Easy Rider
You may have seen the picture of Nora tuning up her tricycle yesterday. She's so tall that her knees hit the handle bars, so I took her to Walmart today, and we picked out a new bike fit with training wheels. I had one of my favorite parenting moments in history when we put the bike on the floor and Nora climbed on and began riding around the aisles of Walmart. Associates paused, shoppers smiled that "little girl's first bike" grin, and I was yelling a bit louder than one usually does in a store, "Yes! That's it, Nora! You are riding a bike! You are riding a REAL bike!"
The first time Nora ever said she loved me was in Walmart in the frozen food aisle with her leaning over the bar where she was sitting in that little seat they make for your kids. I stopped everything and just held her there crying "tears of joy" as she would call them.
We immediately loaded the bike into the back of the minivan (yes, I need a truck) and hit Plum Creek trail with its changing trees, Japanese beetle infestation, corn fields rustling like ladies' gowns in a Jane Austen novel, and we "got our motors running."
Yes, yes that is a unicorn helmet. I know. Awesome. There's even a little plastic Barbie bike attached to the handlebar, so Barbie can ride with her. My first bike was called "Bluebird," and one of the first thing I did was ride right over the cattle guard, down the dirt hill and straight into a patch of cactus. Unfortunately, I didn't have a unicorn helmet. I'm not even sure if I was wearing clothes. We lived in the country, you know.
The day I had my training wheels taken off, Dad took me out to the main road of Apple Tree Trailer Park, and he gave me the big push from the back of the seat, and I looked behind and he wasn't there. I thought he was the one holding me up the whole time. Nope. It was shear ignorance that allowed me to ride my bike. I remember one of the kids who had assembled to watch me risk life and limb for the glory of two-wheeled freedom walked up to my dad and asked, "Are you Jesus?" And Dad said, "No. Not even close." Dad had long hair back then. It was at that moment I realized that my dad was a man trying hard to be a good man.
Nora is also trying hard to be a good human. I was nearly rolling in "tears of joy" on the side of the trail when an older gentleman passed by, rang the little bell on his bike, and Nora called out after him, "Hello there! I'm just in training right now!"
Two other bikers passed us and Nora called out, "Lovely day for a bike ride, isn't it?" The joy she felt becoming part of this new biking community was so tangible. Man, I love her.
The first time Nora ever said she loved me was in Walmart in the frozen food aisle with her leaning over the bar where she was sitting in that little seat they make for your kids. I stopped everything and just held her there crying "tears of joy" as she would call them.
We immediately loaded the bike into the back of the minivan (yes, I need a truck) and hit Plum Creek trail with its changing trees, Japanese beetle infestation, corn fields rustling like ladies' gowns in a Jane Austen novel, and we "got our motors running."
Yes, yes that is a unicorn helmet. I know. Awesome. There's even a little plastic Barbie bike attached to the handlebar, so Barbie can ride with her. My first bike was called "Bluebird," and one of the first thing I did was ride right over the cattle guard, down the dirt hill and straight into a patch of cactus. Unfortunately, I didn't have a unicorn helmet. I'm not even sure if I was wearing clothes. We lived in the country, you know.
The day I had my training wheels taken off, Dad took me out to the main road of Apple Tree Trailer Park, and he gave me the big push from the back of the seat, and I looked behind and he wasn't there. I thought he was the one holding me up the whole time. Nope. It was shear ignorance that allowed me to ride my bike. I remember one of the kids who had assembled to watch me risk life and limb for the glory of two-wheeled freedom walked up to my dad and asked, "Are you Jesus?" And Dad said, "No. Not even close." Dad had long hair back then. It was at that moment I realized that my dad was a man trying hard to be a good man.
Nora is also trying hard to be a good human. I was nearly rolling in "tears of joy" on the side of the trail when an older gentleman passed by, rang the little bell on his bike, and Nora called out after him, "Hello there! I'm just in training right now!"
Two other bikers passed us and Nora called out, "Lovely day for a bike ride, isn't it?" The joy she felt becoming part of this new biking community was so tangible. Man, I love her.
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