Of Skunks, Toilets, and Flight

I tucked my daughter into bed just now. Per our usual routine, I gave the preamble prayer. "Please help Kristina and Jared (don't forget Jared, Mom) not to have any bad dreams, and please help Kristina not to dream about smelling any skunks." I don't know that Kristina would know a skunk if she smelled one, but she has me say the same prayer every night, nonetheless.

My husband tells me his dreams in detail when he wakes up. Somehow, verbalizing and examining that bridge into his day puts things into their proper places, like shutting drawers or making the bed. I, on the other hand, rarely remember my dreams. When I do remember them, I find they generally fall neatly into one of the categories in a dream analysis book. For instance, I was relieved to discover that other normal women also, apparently, spend their sleeping hours wandering past filthy bathroom stalls in vain search for a relatively clean and private place to relieve themselves. Who knew?

In my favorite dreams I fly. Sometimes I soar almost effortlessly. At other times I tire with the labor of flapping my arms to stay aloft. Even when my arms ache, however, I marvel at the fact of my flight.

I have missed those flying dreams in recent years. Though happy enough, I have let my lack of ambition and the weight of everyday routine ground me. Garden variety escape dreams litter my early morning sleep now, dreams that wither quickly in the post-waking reality. I miss the view from above, the power of flight in my arms, and the faith in the impossible.

Just in the past few days, with a couple of simple goals to spur me on, I have begun to feel a tingle of possibility again. Time to dust off those dreams, flex my flying muscles, and reacquaint myself with the world above. Sweet dreams!

People Watching

Daniel Schorr died recently. I always loved listening to his commentaries on NPR. Consequently, on my next trip to the library, I headed over to the biography section, intent on learning more about this man who has piqued my interest over the years. Obviously, someone else had the same idea. No biography available on our dear Mr. Schorr. Undeterred, I began to browse the biography racks for other gems. I knew I would find a handful in short order. Sometime in the last decade I discovered that I love biographies, and that my enjoyment of the book has very little to do with any previous affinity for its subject. I imagine that realization came about the time I devoured a biography of the drummer for The Doors. I can name exactly one Doors song ("Light My Fire," naturally), and even now I can't bring to mind the name of the drummer. Nonetheless, I found the book fascinating.

I suppose I simply love the back stories behind the faces of humanity. I love the joys of discovering nobility in unexpected places and the insights I gain from other folks' triumphs and tragedies, even the small day-to-day ones. With that in mind, I've been thinking of some biographies I would like to read, some people who have crossed my path and left behind a question mark.

Obvious names come to mind, of course. Someday, I want to read the real story of Joseph the Carpenter, not just the few verses in the Bible that mention him or the myths created about him in an effort to preserve Mary's virginity for all time. And I want to read the story of my grandmother, Florence, who died long before my birth.

I also want to read about the 30-something man with a bright blue t-shirt who stood by the roadside yesterday holding a sign that read "will work for living expenses." He wore a baseball cap tilted just over his eyes and looked for all the world like a suburban dad on a Saturday morning.

Maybe someday I will stumble across a memoir by my college roommate. I lost track of her after that first year of college. I ran around with the honors group, and she danced on the dance line. Our circles rarely crossed. I heard some years ago that her husband died in the early years of their marriage. I often wonder how that tragedy affected her.

Half a world away and years later, Steven Koch successfully became the first person to snowboard down the highest peaks on all seven continents. Anyone that crazy must have a fascinating biography out there. In fact, given the expenses he must have incurred in the process of peak hopping, I am quite certain I could purchase his story for a small fee. I should do that.

Also thousands of miles from my sleepy Midwestern town, a Jainist nun named Mataji caught the eye of a journalist for the Washington Post. Mataji and her fellow nuns live an ascetic life, renouncing all possessions and, indeed, all attachments to any thing or person. These nuns walk, barefoot, for years, brushing the ground before their feet to avoid killing even a bug along their path. At the end of their lives, the women take sallekhana, essentially starving themselves to death in a ritual designed to bridge them into the next life. I am intrigued with the motivations and life experiences that bring a young woman like Mataji to such an extreme devotion.

And finally, I wish for a biography I will never have the chance to read. Eighteen years ago, my husband died of cancer at the age of 25. I would love to read about the man he never had the chance to become. As I watch our son grow, I begin to understand how little I knew his father. I would like to know him.

Forgiveness

This past spring I offered forgiveness to a woman who had been, at one time, a close friend. She neither requested nor acknowledged my forgiveness, but it didn't matter. My gesture was, in a sense, selfish, born out of a desire to rid myself of the burden of bad feeling. I hardly understood my feelings about my erstwhile friend as they simmered under the surface for months, clouded as they were by a mist of deceit and hinted complexities.

Were it not for my 4-year old daughter and her increasing references to this woman who had once worked her way so deeply into our lives, I could have buried my frustration. But 4-year olds, particularly when prompted by forces beyond adult comprehension, exhibit a remarkable tenacity. With every reference to Jane's house, Jane's pigs, the day we went swimming with Jane, the sliver worked deeper underneath my fingernail.

I craved emotional freedom, and as I pondered, I realized my only path to that freedom was to forgive. I pleaded with God for the power to do just that. Although I knew I needed to forgive Jane, I could scarcely articulate, even to myself, what I needed to forgive her for. Slowly and surely, however, the forgiveness flowed through me. I remember the day I sat down and wrote a message to Jane, asking forgiveness for those things I knew angered her and offering my forgiveness in return. I clicked Send and settled back in my chair, knowing I would receive no answer but already feeling the lightness. Oddly, my daughter has not mentioned Jane to me since then.

In the past weeks, I learned more about Jane and the actions she took after our friendship. Finally, I saw with clarity exactly what I needed to forgive, offenses I had not suspected before. The clarity should have overwhelmed me, should have chipped my armor. Instead, I felt a remarkable calm, an unexpected and beautiful peace. God, in His infinite grace, granted me the power to forgive in advance of my knowledge, so that when I most needed peace, His peace enveloped me.

Home

When I began to set up housekeeping on my own for the first time, I bought a set of blue willow dinnerware. I find the story behind the painted scene vaguely interesting, but the real reason I set my table with blue willow is because it reminds me of my grandparents' house. Every two years growing up, my family traveled cross-country from wherever we lived at the time to visit my grandparents in Cedar City, Utah. For Mother, these visits were "coming home" in the full sense of the word. Grandpa lived in his father's house, next door to the home where my mother grew up. Uncle Scott lived just past the garden, and the extended family still gathered at the piano to sing. Even with my own infrequent visits to Cedar City, I knew how the basement would smell and where to find my favorite books in the living room. And when I sat down to breakfast, I sat down to a table set with blue willow china.

Unlike my mother, I struggle when faced with the question "Where are you from?" or "Where do you call home?" Often, I simply take the easy way out and name whatever state happens to display on my driver's license. But every once in a while I look at those blue willow plates and wonder what "home" means for me.

I suppose for me home will never be a single place surrounded by walls and gardens, or even a single town with its collection of old friends and "remember whens." Rather, home is a collection of smells and sights and defining moments. 

I see home in the rise of a full moon over the mountains, smell it in the heat rising off the cement on a mid-summer day or in the whiff of mountain pine in the early morning. I taste home when I make sugar muffins for my children on a Saturday morning or chocolate oatmealers for dessert. (My children call them no-bakes, but I secretly still call them "COs" in my mind, just as we did in my childhood.) I catch the scent of creosote on a railroad tie, and immediately I hear the long-ago chatter of cousins as we build my grandparents' cabin in Strawberry, Arizona. I grow roses to the side of the house, just as my mother did. I scribble notes in the margins of my books, stand for long minutes in front of a single painting in a museum, and in my mind my father stands at my side.

Ironically, given the fact that I have spent only 10 years of my life in the Southwest and given the fact that my political leanings make living there an exercise in patience, I find that any roots I have dig deeply into Rocky Mountain soil. When I go home in my head, I smell canyon air, I tell direction by the mountains, and I eat my dinner on blue willow china.

Maiden Voyage

I swore that, despite my husband's gentle nagging, I would never cross the line and get my motorcycle license. Just not my cup of tea. Besides, my husband owns a Harley, and I found the roar annoying in a "look at me while I try to impress you with my manliness" kind of way.

And yet, just the other day, I found myself revving the engine of my Harley at a stoplight, enjoying the feeling of power beneath me and chuckling gleefully at the fact that in just a few minutes I would destroy the peace and quiet of my suburban neighborhood. Nearly a year with an M on my license. Yes, taking that motorcycle safety class was the most intimidating thing I have ever done. But I have to say, life looks better from the back of a bike.

In the spirit of crossing lines I never thought I would cross, I begin a blog. Chalk it up to midlife crisis and a need to prod myself into accomplishing a goal or two. I have always considered blogging an exercise in egocentric exhibitionism. I mean, really, who honestly cares about the inner workings of the average mind? Well, probably no one. But at this point, the need to exercise my brain supersedes my caring what anyone thinks. So off I go. Cornfields to my right, soybeans to my left, I skip into the sunset.