unthaw our hearts

While waiting in the jam up of cars on the ramp going out of the city this morning, I notice a stalled car hugging the guard rail about ten cars ahead.

“How awful” and “what a horrible thing to have happen on this double digit sub-zero morning” are my first thoughts.  As I edge closer, I begin to picture possible scenarios involving the driver’s exit from the car to get help.

Did he or she have to walk down the ramp?  Or did someone drive up, stop next to the car and provide a lift? 

When I pull up next to the car, I notice the windows starting to frost from the bottom up, and then — a hooded form in the driver’s seat.  Rocking back and forth.

My thoughts continue.  Should I do something? It’s moving pretty slow.  Should I get out and tap on the window?  Is he or she waiting for help to come?  Oh no, of course the heat isn’t on if the car is stalled.  It’s minus 15.  This is a terribly lonely and cold thing to endure.

And then I am swept past it. 

I contemplate the consent I’ve given to this process.  I rationalize that I am but a tiny compound of protein riding the convoluted commuter circulatory system, and I hate my excuse for not checking on this person. 

A Saturn mobile comes from behind in a self-made third lane and plays chicken with me to let him go ahead of me.  I give in, and feel sorry for myself.  Life these days , it seems, has become one big game of chicken. 

There is a balloon above my head and it says, “cluck cluck.”

I pray for peace to accompany the clucking — and for the courage to act on my next set of good intentions. 

shivering surrender

 

I open the car door to the realization that things have changed overnight.

The polar wind bites my ankles and rips its way up my skirt.  Once inside the coffee shop, it fights me to keep the door open.  I dig in my heels, lodge my fingers under the door’s push bar, and pull with all my might.   Then the resistance is abruptly gone and I fall ass backward into the foyer.

Minutes later, settled in with my coffee and composition book, I feel another customer blow in and blow off the fate of the door.  With the door by the throat, the wind howls triumphant.  I jump out of my seat and shut it up — eager to apply my recent experience.

I sit back down and another customer flies through the door letting the wind slam it back on its hinges.  The conditions of this morning’s arrangements made clear, I am free to make a choice:

Keep getting up myself — leave — or stay put and hope someone else gets up the next time the bitter wind invites itself in.

If I keep getting up, I won’t get my pages written.  If I leave, I won’t get my pages written.  And if I stay put and nobody moves, I get cold.

I decide to stay put.  Everyone stays put.  We shiver for awhile, the wind loses interest and the door swings shut.

I write three pages. 

The parable of the woman, the wind and the swinging door bringing the shivering gift of surrender into my life this morning. 

sorry with you

 

“Should we go fast Grandma?”

“Yes.  Run — run — run!”

I put some speed behind her and feel tickled about giving her a little thrill.  We sail past the nurses’ station and whipsaw through the resident la-la-land with its bird cage, big screen and parking lot of wheel chairs.  

Thinking about the big kick she gets out of ”being naughty,” I’m kinda hoping someone will yell at us — but we get a rise outta no one.

Back at her room, I hunt for a tissue at her request and settle on a wad of toilet paper that she quickly saturates and holds out for me to take from her.  I attempt to tweezer a corner of it between the very tips of thumb and forefinger, believing there’s a way to accomplish this without getting snot on my own hands.  But it drops to the floor, and then I just grab it.

“Now put me in bed where it’s nice and warm.”

This is not a small request.  Kinda like trying to sink a free throw with a 150 lb. lead basketball.   I land her butt about six inches short of the target and can’t boost her up any further so I move her pillow down instead.  She’s quite happy as I begin to make her a Lalapalooza Blanket Sundae — synthetic plushy, knitted afghan, knotted edge fleece, cotton down duvet, and finally flannel down duvet. 

Now we can talk.  Me in her wheel chair and her in a position that resembles a coffin rehearsal way too much.  Please don’t shut your eyes Grandma.

We pace slowly, in a relaxed comfortable fashion, through our favorite themes.  She leads the way with her questions.

“Well I know you’re Julie.  You lived with me when you were a baby, but whose daughter are you?”

“Nick’s”

“Why do you think you divorced?  Was he Catholic?”

“No.  Maybe that’s why.”

“I would think you’d be hurt.  Were you?”

“Yes, but I had my family and I lived with my sister afterward for awhile.  That helped.”

“She felt sorry with you, huh?”

“Yes, that’s a good way to put it Grandma —”

I do believe she felt very sorry with me.  And that made all the difference in the world.

run river run

“They are killing Christians in North Korea” my hand interjects.

Another rash move of the pen taking me with it.  Ok.  What? 

I stare out the window onto Hennepin into another space, giving in to contemplation.  The word “persecution” crawls in. 

Do I have any idea of what it really means to be persecuted? 

Perhaps.  But I don’t want to go there.  “Yeah, well we’re going anyway,” the pen shoots back. 

My hand moves reluctantly across the page.  I was married to a man who refused to kiss me when my hair was curly.  Pause.

Who ridiculed what I put on unless he chose it.  Forbid me to watch TV.  Stop. 

Denied approval of purchases as small as a cup of coffee.  That’s enough. 

Used me as a pack mule until I collapsed then left me alone in the hospital with the words “this is not what I signed up for” —

And unfortunately, this did not mean he was done with me. 

It’s true, no one took me by force and threw me in prison then tortured me for gazing heavenward.  I walked freely down the aisle and I was free to leave.  And yet.

The prisons partially of our own making are often the hardest to bust out of alive.  And people who thirst for a kind of pleasure that can only be quenched by inflicting pain seek out and count on the complicity of others in their own torture.  This is inconceivable until you live it.

When I think back to the crazy confusion in my head before I got this straight, I could almost laugh out loud.  But I am weeping as I write this and I know recalling it will never leave me without some form of welling up.

Once I connected the dots, it made perfect sense.  If you really want to inflict pain, you place the blow where you know it will hurt the most.  The process of intimacy is like writing the complete guide to the best places to plunge, kick, bite, tease and withhold.  In this way, telling an abusive person your deepest wounds, fears, hopes and dreams is like offering a vampire your jugular. 

“I told him how much pain I was in and he insisted — I cried when he said that and asked him to please stop it and he said it again — He said he wouldn’t have to punish me if I would get his permission first — He said I needed to face the fact that I just wasn’t as good as I thought I was.

“Please tell me what I can do to change this.”

She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Nothing.”

“Oh yeah?  We’ll see about that,” is what I thought eleven years ago.

Returning to the present moment, I stop the pen in its tracks to listen to Loggins & Messina singing one of my favorites, “Watching the River Run” — yes, time is a good thing.

“ — further and futher from things that we’ve done — leaving them one by one.”

before trust

Like so much of what I wrote during this era, this reflects a powerlessness that was very real to me at the time.  I couldn’t see the connection between forcing things to be how I thought they ”should be” and landing in the dumpster.

dumpster-do

the alley way of your mind

where you wait for the wind

to knock you down

get knocked out of you

where the other shoe never fits

always eventually drops

and where running leads

only to dark corners

blocked passageways

the perpetual dumpster

high heels skating

circles in the air

at the end of

lifeless legs. 

après consummation

 

Lurkster alert:  Hides in the alley behind a good thing.  Known to pounce from the back of minds, and in bold cases, right off the tongues of participants or recipients.  Frequently takes the form of “how we gonna top this?”  Shows up before the table is cleared, the ink is dry, or the sheets are cold.  Extremely dangerous to humans, especially creative types. 

Daily doses of trust are recommended to keep this bugger off your tail.

I should know.   The slightest hint of a good thing, and my head used to fill with the sickening sound of the other shoe dropping.  I once left a party thrown in my honor expecting the car to crash on the way home.  I almost closed my eyes and let go of the wheel to get it over with — and then.

I just kept on going. 

And going.

It took awhile — at least 15 years after the imagined fatal car wreck — but ultimately, it was the creative process that delivered trust to me and showed me how to make it my steady companion.

I’m not sayin we’re inseparable, but we’re definitely gettin along these days and I’m learning more every day. 

Trust has taught me to play a wonderful host to good things that come home to me.  To listen and pay attention.  Invite doors to open with gentle curiosity.  Sit back.  Breathe in and out with my treasured guest.  Let the scent of pleasure pervade.  Be drawn out one sip at a time. 

And relish in the consummation.

Après consummation, then, is simply a beautiful afterglow. 

losing it

The back of the church is a thick, heavy wall-to-wall carpet of people by the time I arrive. 

I’m not remembering exactly why it is I am late, but think it has something to do with my boyfriend not being able to pick me up at the last minute.  Or maybe we arrived early with the rest of the pallbearers and their girlfriends and I left for some reason and then came back.

However it came to pass, I’m now packed tightly in a sweltering dream with just about everyone I know from high school.  We fumble through this together — like first times are often fumbled —  unaware, and unable to fully appreciate.  He was 18. 

My friend Susan is next to me, one of four or five bodies that graze me when they shift their weight or reach for a kleenex.  We exchange whispers in the stifling, motionless air and fall silent, straining to hear the service. 

Suddenly the crowd is parting and — thud!  An unidentified classmate is flat out fainted.  She’s wearing a dress, her legs splayed and oh my god — there’s a flood of pee. 

I catch Susan’s eye and we both bite the insides of our lips to seal off a hideously inappropriate attack of laughter.  Look away, Jules.  

Do.    Not.    Look at her.

The corners of my mouth twitch up like the Joker on Batman.  I sense her shaking, on the verge of losing it, and find this hilarious.  A tiny puff of laugh breath escapes me, the beginning of my own tremors.  Our lame attempts at repression are now producing low-grade fever rocks and wheezes that begin to steal the attention from the pool of pee.  We stagger to the exit, explode in the parking lot.

“You sad dog.”  

Crouched down holding my gut and praying I won’t be the next one to pee, I’m laughing too hard to respond.  When I catch my breath, it’s taken away by the sight of the hearse waiting just a few feet from where my knees are ground into the gravel.   

Then the doors of the church open.

And the lineup of pallbearers — now bearing the casket — are heading our way. 

I could tell you we sobered instantly and pulled it together before anyone noticed. 

But anyone who knows us would sooner believe we managed to whip up disguises or crawl away on our bellies to avoid being recognized.  

As Susan might say, “close call, Lucy and Ethel.”  

let delight in

6:30 - 7:30 AM CST:

I wasn’t looking for it, but it found me anyway.  The full moon’s face caught me right between the eyes.  And it dazzled me.

— Feng shui’d in the near black sky as I glanced up on icy walk from car to coffee shop.

— Peering coyly at me from behind the Walker as my thoughts idled at the red light.

— Jumping out and startling me with its huge bold occupancy as I turned the corner and descended the ramp. 

Each time, it broke me open — as only that which you do not possess or control can do.

Nature, the great teacher.  The patient reminder.

brrr — ing it

“I will not be denied,” I say to myself and start piling on the outerwear.

The temp on the car dash registers minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit when I hit the lake.  I don’t see a soul outside of a car yet, but I will.

This is Minneapolis.

Soooo it is.  Yanking off my gloves to wriggle the earbuds of my vintage mini iPod underneath my hat, the first group of runners passes me.  Calhoun Beach Running Club die hards.  I take note of the frost on their caps.  Look down at my own breath making snow.  The music freezes, the battery deadened in less than 5 minutes.

But I feel good.  Dangerously good.

A guy with a dog — not even a Husky — clips straight for me, nods in passing.  I wrestle with my scarf, pull it up over my nose.  Thoughts go deeper with every crackling step. 

“Blowing off the stink” as my mother or her mother or somebody’s mother would say.  

The stink freezes mid air.  I zig zag around it.  Drop down a little deeper and let go, let myself touch what needs to be touched.  Water from my eyes freezes on my burning cheeks. 

Then, rounding the last finger of my beloved Isles, I hear blades scraping before I see the play.  The puck drops and sticks smack the lake, nylon breezers whiz by at breakneck speeds. 

I could go another mile, I think.

I will not be denied the sweet sting of being alive today.

man or woman?

“Yeah, Julie —  it’s Jackie —- Grandma —-,” my sister hesitates. 

I’m filled with a momentary sense of dread.  She wouldn’t leave news like that on a voice message.  No, that’s something I’d do.

Oh, yeah — did. 

The drive to the emergency room after the call from the nurse — she wasn’t breathing when they went to wake her up — didn’t know how long she had — it says ‘do not resuscitate’— pick up pick up pick up — oh god, please pick up.  

I dialed and redialed, five sobbing messages running hopelessly together that Saturday morning three years ago.  Her helpless, half-dressed body limp on the stiff gurney.  So vulnerable.  Breathe.

Whooo-sssssh.  That’s her voice in the background. 

“— just a minute Grandma,” then back into the phone, “Grandma says you haven’t been here in awhile, and she’s wondering —

“She’s wondering if you’re seeing a new man — or maybe,”  little chuckle —

“a woman.”

Trudi pipes in, “Grandma’s nosey.”

“Ok, call us back and let us know.”