Alfred Hitchcock Crossed My Mind For a Minute...

One of those little gifts from a loving God who sometimes likes to play fun games to shock you back into the moment.

Yesterday,  I left the house at about 6:30am.   It was dark and deathly quiet.  I was thinking how odd it was because for working people most people are up and going around that time so it was weird to me that not one other person was out walking a dog or starting their car.   I walked down the three floor walk up and then down the walk toward my carport.   I  stepped off onto the parking lot and hit to auto unlock button for my car.  It doesn't make a sound but it flashes the headlights.    Now behind my carport runs a long line of very tall trees.   Suddenly,  as the light flashed all of the trees became alive with sleepy startled birds.   I don't mean a couple.  I mean at least 100 but probably a million.  Cheeping, not chirping....  (my comparative as to the emotion of the bird.  Chirping is lilting and happy,  cheeping is a birds version of screeching WTF? to me)  and then there was the sound of flapping wings and the trees came alive with movement as they all took to the sky,  probably bumping into each other and branches and heaven knows what else.   I would liken it to a newborn's strong startle reflex.   8 full trees,  in sudden chaos.        I jumped out of my skin and yelped (my sound for WTF?).  Then stood,  watching their outlines against a slightly lightening sky.  Once I realized I wasn't going down in some random angry bird attack,  I began to laugh.   Loud.   If I had been seen on a video monitor I am sure my initial reaction would have been hilarious.   I kept laughing...  I laughed because it was funny.  Then I laughed because I was laughing all alone so had anyone seen me they would have surely thought I had gone round the bend. The birds were gone,  ain't nothing funny here lady, WTF?   I felt joy in the simple act of laughing.  So I laughed more.   I think perhaps it was a little bit of the following days heavy sadness still leaking out in a different  form.   I had tears in my eyes and giggled all the way to the interstate.

That was a definite double header...  WOW!  and THANKS!    It was a very unique way to start my day.   Much better than continuing on from the emotion of the day before.   So I hope everyone get their own tree full of birds moment when they most need it.

Help! Wow! Thanks! and...

Help!  again as i try to lay myself down in peace,   i leave with a a request instead of a thank you...  i wonder if its okay to cycle through so quickly...   please loving God,  please have enough energy to keep up with me...

i pray, please soften the hearts of those who may not even recognize that they are not putting their childrens needs first.   please pass your hand over them and change their hearts...

amen

and so the arrow flies....

Without exact expectations, which will kick you in the pants every time,  the arrow is released in it's correct directional path.  Still on target,  going the right way,  forward.   My arms limp by my side.  Tired from aiming for so long but blissfully achy.    She kissed me goodbye and got out of the car just like she knew what she was doing.   Of course,  she does know what she is doing, she has been doing it for 8 years now.   Now I begin walking to find where the long arcing arrow lands.  Make necessary correctional coordinate changes and once again raise my bow, one finger above, three fingers below and aim.  This time without the monotony of lengthy anticipation.

The Archer's Prayer

In powerful prayer

And wing your wishes

On the air

Towards

The tantalising ten,

Again, again,

Again, again!

O, bend the bow

In praise of gold

And tens and tens

And tens untold -

Towards that blessed

Heaven's Gate,

That lies within

The blood-red eight.

And when the day

Is shot and done

And shadows

Mark the setting sun,

Then pray

That days will come again

When shafts are shadows

In the ten.

- David Hulme

Imitating the Action of the Tiger...

Stiffen the sinews

summon up the blood...

like greyhounds in the slips .
The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge:

Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

The archer still stands, poised and ready...  a quiet prayer to a listening heaven, looking around at surroundings which will never be the same,  what is almost not to be again, forever... keeping an eye on the target, no quiver nor regret, she waits with one finger up and three fingers down cradling the future...

Deafeningly Loud Silence

Its been like this for a while.  I have been developing theories as to why it is.   I have been thinking that perhaps it is so quiet because everyone in Boise is trying not to breathe.   2012 will be the year that drs will be diagnosing us with Boise Black Lung, I am sure of it.    I have healthy lungs and I am hurting all the way through to my back.   Moving around too much causes a cough that sounds as if I am going to  keel over.   I can't imagine how people with compromised lungs are coping.   The smell is in my nose, my clothes and everywhere you go.     But I digress,  I thought it might be the collective not breathing but then I started reading other people's blogs and posts and they too are feeling a very odd silence.  They aren't in Boise so it zapped my theory out of the water.   Someone suggested that the world was just taking a moment to pause before it turns its page into Fall.   I love that idea and it appeals to my sense poetry.    The blue chair has suggested the reason it seems to be resting so heavily on me is because of the how long the time has been for me since I realized I had gifts and possibilities.   It has been a long while,  it takes time to get all your ducks in a row,  and your arrow pointed in the correct direction.  So I have been "hurry upping (its a word cuz i said it is)" and then waiting.   I need school to start.  Routine to start.  I need new faces and conversations.  New ideas to bat around in my head.   I am ready and have nothing but time.   I have settled my arrow on its rest, lifted the bow and begun to pull back...  the tension getting stronger,  containing more and more energy until my bow is bent to its maximum.   With one finger above and three fingers below, I am cradling that arrow.   That arrow has every thing it needs except release.

I am just sitting with this moment,  there is a lesson in it for me or I wouldn't be uncomfortable.   I am finding this to be the rule rather than the exception.  If I am uncomfortable its because there is something I haven't learned yet that needs to be learned before I move on.   The tension in my bow is both painful and delicious.   And I keep running the moment that I remove my fingers from the string over and over again imagining what that release of power will feel like to me and to all the world around me.

The Bucket List meets "Before the Age of Majority" List

My girl continually hears of all of my would be adventures.   She decided she was not to be left in the dust so she told me she was making her own bucket list...   I told her she could absolutely not call it a bucket list because 1- it wouldn't be fair because she has longer to live than I do.  2-  well anyone under 18 who is as healthy as my kid cannot use that saying.   Its my house, my rules.   God I love being the parent.  So we renamed her list as the "Before/At the Age of Majority" list.

Hannah's Age of Majority List

1. Learn to speak Japanese (started)
2. Save enough money to go to Japan with her friend at graduation. (started)
3. Eat a hot dog from a street vendor in Boise on a kickin' Friday or Saturday night.
4. See Katy Perry in concert.
5. Start her own babysitting business.
    (She has already become certified in CPR and the use of an AED)
6. Ride in a hot air balloon.
7. Sing as a part of a choir.
8. Learn to play the piano.
9. See the Solar Eclipse.
10. She wants to see the entire TV drama of ER.  It was one of our video binges we indulged in, in the beginning of the year, when she needed distraction and wouldn't leave my bed for fear of the silence, the suspension of real life for her so she didn't actually have to sleep alone in her own room alone.   Luckily, I was between temp jobs, by the grace of God, and we would wear her out with drama, Noah Wiley and I would sometimes talk about how this show used to be "date night" for my ex-husband (her father) and I.  I would tell her little things about that time in our lives when she was a baby and we would settle her down before 9pm so we could spend just a little time alone together.   It comforted her because she remembered what peace lived inside her blueberry home.  She didn't know the future.  Hell,  none of us knew the future.  So perhaps,  besides Noah Wiley, there was an internal calmness that she had forgotten about growing up in a functional home.  Growing up with a father that she didn't remember as  loving and kind, like the father I would tell her about.  We would watch 'till our eyes hurt and then we would turn off the tv and try to sleep.   She crawled in close to me,  we would whisper thoughts as they came to us.   One night, she and I talked about the last night I tucked her into her blueberry bed.   She knew I was leaving for a different house.  I knew I was leaving to a different house.   Neither of us wanted it to happen.  Although, being the grown up,  I knew why I had to.   A heartbreak I thought only I  would remember.  I was wrong.   I remember lying there in the dark with her and apologizing for having to leave.   I told her that I had no choice but to leave because I would have been living a lie if I stayed.  I was a lesbian and I had to leave.  I told her about the horribleness of pretending to be someone I wasn't and that I just couldn't do it any more.   We were both tearful, laying there whispering in the dark after our long evening of ER.   I told her I was so sorry for having to leave her there, tucked tight in her blueberry bed.   I thought she would say something like,  "I forgive you"  or "Its okay mom"  but instead,  she whispers,  "I know exactly how you felt now mom,  pretending, always pretending to be happy, and perfect and having no one know the truth."   I remembering reaching out to stroke her cheek. I missed and poked her eye.... we giggled but I felt her tears.  I wiped them away.  She reached out and fumbled for my face as well.  She found and wiped my tears away too.   She and I watched every episode of ER we could find but they are scarce... we didn't make it to the 3rd season.   I need to find the entire set of ER for her for Christmas.   I have seen it on Ebay.  I don't know where the money is going to come from but she and I need that.  It was our safe place.

We will update this list as it grows.  And it surely will.  She has only had a few months in which the world of possibilities has been laid before her and I told her the secret...  she can dream.  She can make anything happen she wants to.   She doesn't have to be perfect to be good.  And its okay to fall flat on her face, or change her mind.   It isn't something that she has been used to hearing in the silence of her room.  In a quiet house.  With no one to talk to.  

How exciting it is to be learning from the things I teach her.  How exciting to see her eyes light up when she finds there is no reason not to create her own experiences.

Wow!  Thanks!

holding at Wow, will wait until bedtime to get further into Thanks...

Anne Lamott has a new book, soon to be released as i hear.... called Help. Thanks. Wow. Three Essential Prayers....    now I have no knowledge of what is inside this book so don't begin to think I know something you don't.    But just with this title I have to tell you that this is how it worked for  me today.

I learned HELP!  a few years ago while reading Traveling Mercies, I believe.  So I try to remember to use it before I do something that would not be productive for anyone.  Its simple.  Its to the point and God really doesn't need an explanation.  He has been walking through the muck with me the entire time waiting for me  to ask.

I have been screaming HELP! to a God who surely wishes I would lower my voice, for days now.   It is amazing how hard it is to remember.   To me, its like a "safe word".  (sorry Lord)  but you can be in deep doo doo if you forget your safe word.  If, you are, of course, in a situation where one would need one.   Forgetting a safe word is a major problem.... I hear.      Why I let all the other things run through my head first before I ever think of HELP! is a mystery.   Perhaps I am just not in the habit yet.   Perhaps, I don't believe it can be as simple as that.  One word.   No essay, no application no confession or hair shirt.  Just HELP!

Its been more than a few days really.   Its been almost 2 weeks, that is 14 days... wow when I put it that way, seriously?  I have been in spiritual turmoil for 14 days?  How embarrassing...  it feels like much longer.  It always does.   I could have never been Moses.

I finally said it,  today.  HELP!   I actually didn't even say it out loud.   I wanted to find somewhere to scream it and throw rocks and empty pixie sticks, anything really...  I wanted the physical world to hear the sound of a soul in desperation.  But logistics just weren't happening.   I needed to be completely alone and surrounded by excellent scenery of parched ground, emptiness, candy wrappers and rocks... lots of rocks.  Oh and a professional movie sound team and of course, the cameras... and maybe Ron Howard.   But mostly,  I needed to be alone to scream out loud in front of all those people.

"HELP!" inside I said,  and ad libbed a little bit more,  "I am going crazy.  Make it stop PLEASE?!"

I am have been rendered ineffectual toward some of the situations in my life and have been now for (I promise) more than 14 days.   3 years.  Still not Moses but enough for this girl.

I got home from the futile dance I do every two weeks.   Even knowing that in December someone who can change things, save children, make grown ups act appropriately,  will come, its just getting to be too far away. The closer it gets the farther away it is.    I have absolutely no control over it.

Where the hell is Ron Howard?  I thought as I pulled into my apartment house.   Instead,  my loving daughter starts dinner.   Wonderful tacos, as I sit down to my email hoping for.... what?   HELP?   And there it was,  HELP :-).   My son, my beautiful son who is out in life, living happily, honestly and lovingly,  shows up in my email with a shout out with a new phone number and then an actual phone call.   His voice,  his stories of what he has been doing, and blessed reassurance that he too, loved his mother.   He is exactly who he wants to be.   I couldn't ask for anything more than that from a child.  Be happy.  Be healthy.  Have plans.  Be in the moment.   After the heart to heart, and the sound of the phone disconnecting, I sat on the side of my bed.   Wow,  I thought.  Thanks!

The tacos were amazing.   The peace is amazing.   All I had to do is remember my safe word.   HELP!?   Perhaps,  I need to remember it sooner.  Or ask before I start looking for Ron Howard to direct my complete breakdown.  Perhaps,  I can do it differently.   Perhaps it should be a waking prayer.   HELP?!     Then the recognition in the middle of the day of WOW!  and then the sacred time at night when I can give thanks, THANKS!  seems so much easier than what I have been doing.