Strength and Vulnerability

The day was unscripted. I had absolutely no plans or commitments. I lay in bed as the sky turned white with morning, hoping I might return to sleep, but lingering instead in an in-between kind of state, just thinking, or better still, not thinking, but gratefully aware of being comfortable, of the breeze on my face, of a sense almost of floating. Even the arthritic ache with which I coexist seemed to have subsided. There were plenty of things I could get up and start doing, but there was no urgency to any of it, and that was fortunate, because I was utterly devoid of inspiration or motivation.

So I closed my eyes and the portal opened: random images, memories, and sensations began their motley procession through my head, springing forth from an infinite source. Maybe it was the soft gray morning light that pulled me back to childhood. Suddenly I remembered, for example, exactly how it felt to clutch my tiny patent leather pocketbook, pleased with the knowledge of two nickels and a rabbit’s foot inside, or to lie on the living room floor drawing pictures with my brother Eddie, or to see the moon outside my grandfather’s pizza place on McDonald Avenue and for the first time understand that it was the same moon seen by all people everywhere. Oh, how the wonders and worries of those early days unfolded, blooming kaleidoscopically! And somehow it’s all in there even now, and I have access to it, if I let the projector run: the fragments of conversation, the gentle grandeur of trees, the surprise of stars, how other people’s houses smelled funny, how good it felt to run as fast as I could around the block.

My grandson is in that early stage right now. Every day is filled with new discoveries, and I often wonder how much he will remember as the decades flicker by. The last time we talked, he showed us a scrape on his knee. “I fell down,” he said, “and I cried.”

“We all fall down,” I told him. “I fell down myself, not long ago, and I cried too. It’s like this: you fall down, you get up, you cry, and then you stop.”

“I didn’t stop,” he said.

I understood. He let those big emotions carry him away, and sometimes it’s hard not to.

A continent and an ocean separate us now, but I love the little remnants of his presence in my house. I eat my cereal from “Felix’s bowl”, a yellow plastic dish left behind from his last visit, and it makes me smile. He asked once why we couldn’t have our nighttime and daytime at the same times, as though it were ours to orchestrate, and maybe someday I’ll explain. But he vividly remembers being here. If he were in California, he said, he would paddle down the little stream that leads to the sea, and he seemed to be reliving it as he described it.

Meanwhile there are the lucky children right in the neighborhood, here and now. I saw several at the cabaña yesterday, beautiful little girls who burst upon us like a covey of colorful, joyful birds, so healthy and fit and luminous. They had been playing in the ocean, and they are strong swimmers, these girls. They paddle to the kelp beds and they’re learning how to surf, and they seem at ease in the world, on land or sea. I watched them for a long time: bright blue bathing suits, long tangled hair, wet and salty, smiles and laughter, a visible kind of confidence and strength. (And I couldn’t help but think how much they deserve to see a woman as president!)

I see strength in the women my own age, too. As I lay in bed this morning and the timeline of random memories shifted to the recent, I thought of my friend Jan, in particular. A few days ago, we were doing a long hike and took a break at the top of a climb, and I could picture us now, sitting on the ground, looking out for ants, refreshed by a few swigs of water, cookies, and strawberries, and then preparing to get up.

“Let’s do this,” says Jan, and I watch her with affection as we both unfold our stiff bodies, seek a stable placement for our feet, and awkwardly hoist ourselves from the ground. Sweaty and grinning, we are upright again, and ready to resume our hike. That’s the way it is these days. We have our aches and clumsiness, strategize before we move, and get up slowly. Jan is dealing with unusual challenges right now and doing so with remarkable diligence and love. At the same time, she finds ways to be of service, delivering meals to isolated seniors, writing letters to help get out the vote, being a support to family and friends. I see her strength and vulnerability, and I admire both. Because being vulnerable makes us human and compassionate.

We women understand each other, and we’ve become a sort of tribe, “angels of the get-through”, as poet Andrea Gibson terms it. She writes, in this lovely excerpt of a longer poem:

All living is storm chasing.
Every good heart has lost its roof.
Let all the walls collapse at your feet,
Scream “timber” when they ask you how you are.
“Fine” is the suckiest word. It is the opposite of HERE
Here is the only place left on the map
Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct
and come back

And that is what we do, but only because we have one another.

Anyway, there I was, lingering in bed on this particular morning, watching movies in my head, replaying moments, feeling random feelings, and there wasn’t any reason to jump up.

I even knew that someday I would remember being here in my own bed with someone I love nearby and a breeze through an open window, and I would realize it was one of the happiest times of my life. Yes, someday I would yearn for it, and it was happening now, and so I lay there, floating free.

The room brightened as the day drifted in and I noticed the layering of sky, the band of white at the horizon, the beginnings of blue, the shy light, emboldened, striking a mirror, splashing color on the covers.

Another poet makes an entrance here…Lisel Mueller…who wrote this:

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles
and pulls you back into childhood
and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows
or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs standing hip to hip,
you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows
something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous
that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever.