thoughts

Some times we’re on the mountaintop, some times we’re in the valley.  Can’t win ‘em all.  When the goin’ gets tough, the tough get goin’.  When push comes to shove.  Stick a fork in me.  All that to say- this time it’s personal, and a bit off the beaten path.  My poetic apologies to the concrete among us.  No seriously.

There’s always that little box on the login page, “Remember me”.  If you check it, you never have to enter your login or password again, if you leave it empty, it’s like you never were.  I like to leave it empty for fear of identity theft and other modern day assaults, but on this particular day, I checked the Remember me box for personal reasons.  I’d like to be remembered.  I’d like to imagine that I’ve left a mark on this world, that a generation from now I won’t be a misspelled name on someone’s family tree somewhere.  Wouldn’t you.

I’d also like to say I’ve got something fantastic on my mind to float into the world, but I don’t.  I’ve spent many blank moments trying to think of something relevant that I have to talk about, all the historic and heroic chaos in the Middle East, the incessant mention of Charlie Sheen on world news channels, the weather changing to spring right before my eyes, the devastating crisis in Japan.  I know there is much to be said, but for those things I have no intelligent words.  However disappointing.

I’ve recently experienced a personal loss, and there’s been soft slow syrup of reason running through my mind, and I’m sorry to say it, but sometimes… that’s all I’ve got.  If I were a musician I’d write it into a song, let the people sing it, fill their own lives into my personal and specific feelings.  If I were a child I would cry.  Nap.  Watch an extra movie in my day.  Sleep on Mom and Dad’s floor.  Seems there’s nothing worth doing.  I’ve found my fury has waned, as age has grown thick on me.  What would have thrown me up in arms now rolls off my back like rain.  It finds the dry ground and is whisked away.  Gone.  The volume turned down.  There’s nothing worth staying home for.  Nothing worth adding more wrinkles to my eyes with hysterical crying, no purpose in sessions of ranting or sobbing, or running.  Today is better lived in peace than washed away with emotions tide.  The eyes in the rear view mirror still look the same.  Maybe a little worse for wear, but not so different that I can’t remember their fits of elation, disappointment, loneliness, giddy infatuation.  To scream might turn some heads, but what more.  If I may borrow the words of mediocre failures throughout eternity, what’s the use?

The rain one morning was offensive.  Huge drops of slush banging on my windshield, melting on contact.  The illusion of a rainy day but harsher, less fulfilling.  Confusing.  Each one the nemesis to my silence.   Glad to be under bridges, parked in garage.  Refuge and silence.  Stop smacking me!  Feels like it’s been years since I could go outside and feel the fresh air on my face.  Winters dreary has crawled inside my coat, keeps me cold, even as the days warm up.  What is this place?  How much longer must I remain?

The week will go by, has gone by.  Tears, sure.  And why not.  I’d say I feel better, but I’m pretty sure Daylight Savings time doesn’t make it this hard for everyone to get out of bed in the morning.  Either way is fine.  It won’t be long now; I’m due for a rebound.

Lucky for me, the dirt in my garden is exposed, and my driveway hoop is calling.  Lucky for me the father most chastises the son who is to receive the inheritance.  Promises have been made.  It has been marked as pleasure.  It has been marked.  Not to mention the plans.  I have plans.  Haven’t you heard.

(In closing, the following is an excerpt from Wikipedia.  It describes the creation of a marble sculpture.  If you so desire, feel free to join me in looking upon it with anticipation.  Breathe it in.)

“The carver usually begins by knocking off, or “pitching”, large portions of unwanted stone.  The carver places the point of the chisel or the edge of the pitching tool against a selected part of the stone, then swings the mallet at it with a controlled stroke. He must be careful to strike the end of the tool accurately; the smallest miscalculation can damage the stone, not to mention the sculptor’s hand. When the mallet connects to the tool, energy is transferred along the tool, shattering the stone.  This is the “roughing out” stage of the sculpting process.  Once the general shape of the statue has been determined, the sculptor uses other tools to refine the figure.  These tools are generally used to add texture to the figure.  Eventually the sculptor has changed the stone from a rough block into the general shape of the finished statue. Tools called rasps and rifflers are then used to enhance the shape into its final form.  The sculptor uses broad, sweeping strokes to remove excess stone as small chips or dust.  The final stage of the carving process is polishing.  This abrading, or wearing away, brings out the color of the stone, reveals patterns in the surface and adds a sheen.”

The Leaning Tower of Pisa Crashes to the Ground!

That’s the news headline I’m really waiting for.  It’s bound to happen, right?  See, I collect newspapers of noteworthy events: 9/11, Katrina, the death of Reagan (which was printed in error and corrected the same day), Obama’s election (which I’m sure some of you wish had been printed in error, myself not included).  As a budding historian, I consider these primary sources priceless!  And someday, I’ll have this one too: The Leaning Tower Crashes Down! (no lives lost).

So I jumped on my good friend Wikipedia to see how long I would need to wait to get my hands on this paper.  Call me uninformed, but I had no idea about what I would find.  Turns out that the official word is at least two hundred years!  If you can even believe it, that tower has been “stabilized”, that’s right, “stabilized”.  The threatening lean is just an illusion now.   Major restoration efforts in recent years have removed dirt from the raised side of the tower’s foundation- successfully.  For the first time in History, it has stopped moving!  It is not falling!

Even more interesting is that the tower itself was built crooked.  In the 12th Century they reached the third floor of construction only to discover that wet foundation was causing the tower to lean so drastically that construction was halted.  A century later, the tower was finished, crooked, on purpose.  On purpose!  They intentionally built the last four floors taller on the lower leaning side, and the staircase uneven to assist in longevity.  Maybe I’m the only one who had no idea about this, but I am shocked.  That changes everything!  Here I thought that there was this miraculous tower, built in perfectly straight glory so long ago, stretching it’s Gothic pillars to the sky, now still standing against all odds, against even the un-tamable force of gravity!  That’s what makes it a wonder of the world isn’t it, that gave it its popularity?  But no, it’s just a crooked old building, intentionally built that way, and maintained that way through centuries of human intervention.  So why is it such a tourist attraction, such a well-known piece of architectural history, an icon in our time?

I realize that I often assess the value of knowledge based on my ability to over personalize it, so here’s what I’ve come up with.  That overrated tower is just like me.  And maybe you.  Probably not all of you, some of you probably built your lives on a strong foundation, tested and sturdy.  You worked diligently and measured each brick against your blueprint for success as you added each layer, as you watched them growing up towards the sky, each floor complimentary to the one on which it rested.  Undoubtedly even for you, there were revisions along the way, major plan changes, surprises, blessings, compromises, devastating losses that brought you to question the whole damn thing, gashes that ate away at your humanity, maybe entire rooms full of tragedy, confusion, elation, or awakening, that weren’t in the original designs.  Love, pieces of your heart.  But your tower stands tall and straight, because of and in spite of all of those things.  And your project continues.

Maybe it’s your sister or brother that is leaning :o)  For us, crooked structures halted in construction along the way, possibly time and time again, maybe we reached the third floor only to realize that to build on would lead to our certain demise.  Maybe our foundation flooded us out, or we started building before the foundation had settled.  So what do we do, we intentionally adjust.  Maybe a century later.  We muster up the caution to build each proceeding floor in order to balance the one below.  Our rooms of surprises, blessings, tragedy, elation, and awakening are visibly uneven.  Love.  Each floor with one side taller than the other, directing us higher and decreasing the angle to which we lean.  And then we find that we want better that than, more permanent, less likely to succumb to gravity, so we dig.  We cannot go back and add dirt to our foundation, but we reach a height where we can clearly see the angle at which we need to dig.  And our project continues.

So after all the beautiful buildings that our society has torn down to build “parking lots,” why will we never let the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall to its shattering death?… because we love that imperfect piece of high maintenance stone.   We as imperfect people walking through the perfect angles of our lives have a special affection for Pisa.  It’s one of the only honest creations of humanity.  We are a race of striving, progressive, perfecting people.  We master things, tame them, stabilize them.  We package our lives in summarized Christmas card adjectives and tie bows around them before presenting them to the people around us, even the people who love us.  Even our grief we share neatly in the presence of acceptable instruments of sadness: movies about people who overcome special needs, pictures of military men and women embracing their children in an airport.  These things are approved outlets for our sadness.  We fight with our family instead of crying for them in our loving concern.  We soak up the snot and tears in disposable kleenexes and then throw them away to disintegrate in a covered landfill.  Even our excitement we corral: permission to kiss at our own wedding, our inside voices, and the meaningfulness of a standing ovation.  We wait for the opportunity to unbridle our favor and scream ENCORE!  It is our straight tower.  It works for us.  It keeps us on track.  We have decided that this helps us to continue in our projects.  But not Pisa.  Pisa is exposed.  Only seven stories high and it competes in the ring of national attention with the tallest structures made by man.  Its glaring imperfection has given it longevity, superiority, and attractiveness beyond its design.

But is it a wonder or is it the only attraction in the world that I have never visited but have already seen- every morning when I look in the mirror.  Sure, even though I am naively shocked to find that it is not still standing against all odds, I still want to visit it, to take a cheesy picture of me fake holding it up as it towers over me.  Who wouldn’t?  But now that I know, the wonder does not remain.  There’s no gravity defying tower, only a work of restoration.  One restoration after another.

Fa la la la la… you know the rest.

Thanks to that darn STAR 102, Christmas started early again this year.  It happens such that children think Christmas music is one of the wonders of the world, so once that radio station goes rogue at the beginning of November, there’s no turning back; the slippery slope into the bowels of Christmas cheer begins.  My Pollyanna happy thought comes, however, from finding out that Christmas music is the perfect buffer to delivering bad news. As it turns out, you can tell a child just about anything without consequence while they are singing along to Christmas music,

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la la la la la…”
“Hey sweetie, unfortunately the dog ate your favorite toy”…
“Ok mom… ‘Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la la la la la…“
“And honey, because he ate your toy, Rover got sick and died”…
“That’s too bad mom… Don we now our gay apparel, fa la la la la la la la laaaaa….“
No tears or nothin’!  It’s a Christmas miracle!

But seriously, our dog didn’t die (this year so far), so I’m off and wondering again which ghost of Christmas past stole my Christmas cheer.

It happens every year around this time, the stress of finals looming, the mess of rearranging the whole house to accommodate my husband’s Christmas spirit, the budget issues surrounding an extra paycheck spent on gifts for my expansive and generous family.  I’m always a bit gloomy when I return home after leaving the warm Thanksgiving table and the cold dry snow up north.  Then out comes the two green bins of Santa’s vomit.  Predictably the mantel is decorated first, then the tree, then the assorted shiny silver, red and green leftovers scattered to all corners of the house.  The Christmas music in the background, some old and cherished, some with a teen dance beet and some oddly irrelevant and out of place word changes.  The egg nog.  A fire.  Pa in his kerchief and I in my computer chair wishing I could get up the Christmas spirit to help decorate.

This year it’s the Advent wreath that reminds me to dread the holiday that is coming.  Last year we didn’t light our advent candles.  I didn’t do much of anything Christmassy around here actually, cause last year I was reaching the heights of an illness around that time that landed me in the ER the day after Christmas… crash cart, epinephrine hangover, scared to go to sleep that night for fear I wouldn’t wake up.  Last year it was the extra stocking that reminded me: the matching set to my sons’, purchased in anticipation of our expected new addition, a baby that never made it to Christmas the year before, another holiday visit to the ER.  Going back further: job loss, marriage struggles, sickness, songs that remind me of a family home from years ago, burned to the ground and covered with new land on which others now build their lives.  All wrapped up with a Christmas bow, a yearly unpredictable disaster waiting to happen.  ‘Tis the season.

So… it is indeed a Christmas miracle that I await.

I realize that there are many people in my shoes, hoping only for peace this Christmas, and also many for whom Christmas has only ever delivered joy, and those somewhere in between.  For some this will be their first Christmas without a loved one, for others their first with a new love, a spouse, a visiting friend, a baby’s first holiday.  For many it will be just another splendid 25 days of lights, food, and laughter.  For most of us it will be a barrage of holiday exchanges, bogus sales, and unruly grocery store traffic.  For all of us students if will be a sigh of relief after two weeks of studying and stressing over semester grades.

I also realize that I once again have no idea what this Christmas will bring to me.  So here’s my plan: tomorrow I sulk.  I bury my head in the homework that I put off in order to enjoy my Thanksgiving break, and I feel sorry for myself, relating all of my woes irrationally to the coming of Christmas.  Then the next day I shop.  Take my eager little boy full of ridiculous gift ideas to Target and buy myself some affordable Christmas cheer.  The day after that I will light my advent candle a few days late, drag out some Christmas reading, and compliment my husband on our exquisitely decorated home.  Then it’s finals with smiles, Union Station with all the Christmas trains, my sisters’ fabulous cooking, movies in the theater, candles on Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning to the soundtrack of STAR 102.

All the while my Christmas wish will be that I will find that place where children go when the Christmas carols begin, having fallen prey to the disaster-erasing cheer, the consequence of a Christmas miracle.