The Dark

It's incredible how love opens the heart.

I recently had the chance to escape for a morning with four dear friends to celebrate someone's birthday. We each got a massage, ate absurd macaroons, relaxed in a hot tub, and ordered an absolutely ridiculous lunch which we shared in the bright, fall sunshine with the back drop of the flatirons framing our gathering. I left a jellied mess both physically and emotionally because it is such an incredible thing to be truly witnessed by other human beings and it can be such a rare phenomena. 

But here, in this place, I feel embraced despite my imperfections. The ways in which I am weak are the ways others are strong and, regardless of the struggle, I am cherished and celebrated and it provides me with so much nourishment; this is especially true in the wake of Covid and the fire and the King Soopers shooting. In the aftermath of 2020 and the challenges immediately following, I struggled to work up the will even to change a light bulb. But I don't think any of us had time to process or mourn or figure out why performing the bare minimum felt impossible--the only way out was through and so we have all landed in this current now and are attempting to surface from a reality that lasted for long days and months and years.

And despite the fact that there is a good deal to process and much work still to do, none of us is alone. I relive the darkest moments of the last several years and beside me walk four of the bravest, kindest, most beautiful humans I have had the privilege of knowing. And when it gets too dark or I feel too frightened or the odds seem insurmountable, I am carried along. And if another feels defeated or bone-weary, we all lean in a bit more, propping one another up in defiance of a narrative that the world is solely a bad or scary or terrible place. 

And in the distance, not too far ahead, the light of a candle burns strong and defiant, a promise to each of us that the first hint of light on the horizon threatens the reign of night. The stars seem to whisper a quiet reminder that the dark, too, is fallible. There is light ahead but it is here, also, in this circle where each is held and beloved and loved without pretense. It's incredible how love opens the heart, light emanating outward, forcing even the most insidious of night to retreat. 

Fleeting

These days pass so quickly and every single one is filled with self doubt and uncertainty. I worry ceaselessly that I'm not showing up for my kids like I need to be. I fret when I lose patience with them-- when I don't share enough joy--that I am modeling living like a robot. I worry that my work is mediocre, that I am clocking in without effecting real or lasting change; since my job involves the quality of the exams my patients receive, quiet quitting or accepting my lack of bandwidth feels impossible. I worry deeply about regret, about the things left unsaid or undone. I worry I will have wiled the years of my life away doing most things halfway. I fret and I fret and I fret and yet there isn't a release valve because there is not a thing in my life that I can stop doing; my children are the center of my universe, my job provides us with health insurance and opportunity, and the limited self-care I squeeze into the day feels essential to my mental health.

In the midst of the chaos, though, I am mostly happy. I held my youngest yesterday in the middle of a park in the middle of a rainstorm and her small, warm body pressed against mine and I was struck suddenly with the magic of having this little person in my life. Not in one thousand years was she in my dreams. Not in all of eternity did I think I could be so blessed to have the company of such extraordinary and bewildering little people. To think I lived so many years without them feels impossible.  And being their mother is the best thing I will ever do.

I worry about the increasing bandwidth they occupy in my life because their actual job is to grow up, pursue their interests, chase their goals, and leave me. They must go. But I know, even now, that it will leave me shattered. My life will fill again with travel, interesting meals, and friendship that can take place after 7pm, but I suspect those things will leave me empty and hollow and yearning for the little bodies that grew big and adventured onward.

This stage of life is a cluster of obligation to all the things with too little bandwidth. It is bursting at the seams. And yet, I have the sneaking suspicion that not too far in the future, I will miss these numbered, endless days.

I Will Find You

I will find you a thousand more times, in this life and the next and the one after. Ours is a shared song, one that reverberates low and strong and steady, on and on and on and on.

I would search the grains of sand on the seashore, picking up every last one if it meant holding you--even in the palm of my hand--one more time.

My roots would search through rocky, clay-filled soil, spreading through the deep dark until I am met with the low hum of your soul, roots wrapping tightly around one another beneath while leaves are blown by the wind above.

I would journey into an endless desert, sun-parched and water-desperate if it meant one more snuggle, one more moment of intertwining my fingers with yours.

Perhaps it has always been this way with one another, through eons and eons and the passage of time. Perhaps you and I together are an inextricable, inseparable chemistry. Perhaps I have spent every moment of every life wondering and hoping and dreaming of our next moment.

I will find you a thousand more times, in this life and the next and the one after. Because ours is a shared song, one that will reverberate without end into eternity.

On the Nature of Daylight

When you listen to music, does your heart still open? It still happens for me on occasion that I am swept away with someone else's melody, someone else's version of beauty, and I am thankful for every song ever written that has transported me elsewhere. It happens less frequently now that I am older (or busier, perhaps?), but there are still songs that force my heart open, that expose my most raw and vulnerable self to the world. And at some moment in obsessively repeating a song over and over and over again, I cry. But the kind of crying I do to music, to the songs that expose my raw soul to the elements, is always a good cry and always essential. It hurts. Because life is both infinitely beautiful and painful in the same breath. And the part of me that can cry to a beautiful melody is often buried deeply in the melee of being alive, of having children, of attempting to make a living.

The infinite relatability of music is still earth-shattering to me. Sometimes, a song sneaks through to the masses and becomes universally beloved. The song from episode three of This Last of Us (On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter) leaked its way to mass appeal after it aired in one of the most poignant moments in all of television history and everyone I know was abuzz with the genius of Richter. This song tells the listener a story; it is ecstasy and sorrow in the same breath. It feels like existing on this planet as a human being. It is the collapse of the world trade center and the bystanders who dug through rubble to help. It is the mama whale who carried her deceased baby around for 14 days. It is love and loss, growth and regression, sorrow and exhilaration in the same moment.

When I am transported by music, I have hope that the fundamental parts of my humanity still exist, though they may be in a temporary state of dormancy. I detest the idea of living a dull and tedious life. I don't want to be half present. I want to be all here for every brutal blow, every season of grief, and every sorrowful tear. And I want to celebrate with a full heart the wise words of my aunt who has carried me for so long, the absolute joy of motherhood, and the obscene fortune of being surrounded by a community who holds myself and our family with such delicacy and warmth.

The composers of these songs put the experience of life into melody. And sometimes, that written melody matches up so perfectly with our own existence, that we are transported into something much bigger and more connected than we are able to see living our own, isolated lives. We are reminded that, indeed, none of us walks these paths alone. And we are all inextricably and forever linked, united in our jubilation, sorrow, and celebration.

BLS

Today, I cried in my Basic Life Support renewal class. The woman teaching the class was stern, factual, and proud of the work she does. She offered lots of corrections and areas for improvement and was exceptionally clear about the many ways we could seriously wound or kill a baby while trying to save a life. And then, suddenly, she got misty-eyed and started talking about saving babies while using CPR. She noted that while there isn't science behind it and the American Heart Association doesn't know why, babies respond better to CPR when the compressions are happening while they're being held. She looked at us in earnestness and said, "The major theory here is that a baby lives with the rhythm of its mother's heart for close to ten months. The sound track of their lives is a heart beat. And so in their moments of greatest stress and need, there is something unknown about the presence of a heart beat while you administer this life-saving work."

Crying in a BLS class is a first for me. But it hit me with tremendous magnitude that in all of the science textbooks and in all of the things that we know about the human body, we almost entirely neglect the soul or the impact other human beings have on our own existence. We can survive with food and drink and water, but can we blossom? And even though I am an adult (full-fledged), I am so infinitely fallible. I yearn for so much. I am so filled when in the presence of those I most love. I am lonely when I feel emotionally abandoned. All of the child-like emotions I have known for so long are still there, I just do a better job burying them.

I feel preposterous even writing it here because I am nothing if not a healthcare worker; but in the process of resuscitation, could the presence of another's heart beat draw you back from the edge? Could the warmth of a body remind you to return here instead of passing to the next thing? Could the warmth and vitality of my body speak, encourage, and push someone on the edge one way or another?

I am veering precariously close to the edge of new-age pseudoscience that I absolutely deplore, and yet it is not preposterous to think that the comfort of another human body could tip the balance. The warmth, presence, and encouragement of another human body has altered my existence multitudinous times, it just wasn't with something physical like encouraging my heart to beat again. But perhaps the division we see between one another is not so infinite. Perhaps your mere presence here alone is enough to nourish and enough to encourage me forward. 

Perhaps it is enough to share this space together, this very specific time, and to hold one another when we feel too weak or exhausted or overwhelmed to continue. Perhaps it should suffice to be near enough to you to feel your heart beat, the consistent thrum thrum of my heart working in unison with yours.

Shine

From very early on, I knew my eldest brother was the smart one. My mom told us. He was gifted. He was advanced beyond his peers. He was mature and capable and had gifts well beyond those of my middle brother and I. There were other niches for us to fill, but being intellectually gifted was taken.

My middle brother became the rogue, independent-thinking activist. I became the only girl, the artist, and the socialite. We owned our titles, our roles, until we left for college.

But not being the smart one is a truth I had accepted until very recently. As my kids get older, I think about the way my perceptions of who they are might drastically alter who they come to be. My mom decided for us very early on where our gifts lay and I was complicit in her story, and the limitations it established for me, until very recently.

Unpacking childhood is complicated because it's difficult to determine which narratives are yours and which are your parents. We wear them without even realizing they don't belong to us. We carry them through our interactions with others. We study a group of individuals in the room and look to fill a niche like the one we did in our own family because it's comfortable there; I know exactly the expression to put on display, precisely the self-deprecating joke to pair it with, to have an entire room bonding over my hilarity. I know how to fill that role and I do it without so much as a thought.

And the most earnest truth is that I have never minded being the peacemaker because it is a part of my nature. Yearning to put people at ease is something I feel intuitively. And so it is not with resentment that I reflect back on my early years, but with a deep sense of empathy for the little girl who was told over and over and over again about the brilliance of a sibling to the point that she stopped believing in her own merit or capabilities.

How much of that little girl's life was defined by trying to prove that she was good enough and smart enough and maybe she could never be number one but she could at least come in at a close second? 

I hope I am able to remain neutral in the coming years, to let my children define their own existence, and to build their own way forward. I hope I support them when they need it, but don't define them in the process. I want to be the biggest possible cheerleader to each of them, without preferentially picking one over the others.

There are infinitesimal ways to bring light to the world and a million ways to shine. Each of my kids will do this differently (they already do), but I hope one is never fed so much fuel that their brightness diminishes the radiance of the others.