Listen

In every house, the sounds are different. This one: The tick-tock of the kitchen clock, the low hums of the refrigerator and the fan on my computer, the click of the coffee pot cooling down. At certain times of day, kids shouting to one another from their bicycles on the way home from school. Just enough sound to make the quiet peaceful rather than deafening.

Sharing Space

Swarming on the walkway are hundreds of black bugs with red splashes on their sides. When I got here, the grown bugs were mating. Then tiny red babies were born. I've watched them these last months, the red on the babies slowly darkening to black, their bodies growing. I tiptoe through the masses, trying not to crush them.

•in the all-together•

I have locked myself in the bathroom to write this. (Going on a full month without any toddler-free time, here.) But wait! I have news! Silvery, shimmery, glittery news! Today I achieved a personal dream. I turned on and used my outdoor shower. Twice. The conditions were perfect: toddler asleep, 103 degrees in the shade, and an apparatus so cobbled-together as to make my usual half-assedness look meticulous (the pictures don't exactly capture the hose-to-pipe-to-hose connections; they also elegantly hide the PVC aspect of the whole affair). I twisted our garden hose into place, turned on the spigot at the house, and scampered back to a little hummingbird brimming with promise. Then, wriggling out of clothes and giggling like an idiot, I turned that bird. And showered. It was so very short, but so very delightful. It was glorious, refreshing, and everything I'd hoped it would be. Finishing up, I peered out at the apartment complex behind our house and, well, I was not alone. Not sure exactly what I'd thought (that people wouldn't be home? that no one would notice me, naked and laughing on a Sunday afternoon?), but it was odd to be seen at that moment. I can't really say that I cared, but I felt some distant shade of indignation. "I can see you, you know," I called, as if pointing out that I could see the man would make him somehow less interested in seeing me. He did not move. Maybe he wasn't looking at me. Or maybe he didn't care, just as I didn't care, and was going to watch, damnit, in the same way I am going to continue to shower, damnit, outside. What might he have seen? Nothing porn-r-ific. Just a tired mom's bodkin, the color of cottonwood... a woman ablaze with satisfaction. I skittered away toward the spigot (off) and my clothes (on), skin prickling with joy. xox

•tether•

If I tiptoe around, hush every chore, stifle even the thought of the toddler I've been begging to sleep, eventually I just sit. All that strain to keep a slumbering person slumbering. I stop, and burn through naptime in my head.

Put down accomplish; pick up rest. xox

Shattered

Whether or not you choose it, it seems shattering a life is much like shattering anything else.

The initial breakage is utter chaos. Your feet are bare, and there you are, standing in the middle of shards, that cup of coffee you were so looking forward to splattered on the floor, the wall, the table and chair legs. Who knew liquid could travel so far propelled only by the force of a mug hitting the ground? Who knew the pieces of the mug could bury themselves in dark corners, under the china cabinet, in the next room over? Who knew a mug could break into so many individual pieces, each one a memory of the lovely thing you once had?

And that’s the tricky part—the way the mug’s pieces are suddenly so lovely to you. Suddenly, all you can see is the work and love that went into this handmade thing, the investment of time and energy at the wheel and hope in the firings, the beauty of the glaze.

Somehow, in your grief, you don’t remember the hairline fracture that ran through the whole thing—the flaw that meant it was simply a matter of time before the mug broke anyway.

********************

When a favorite mug of mine broke a few years ago, I was devastated. I guess that’s a little odd, but my feelings about mugs run deep—I’ve made many of the mugs I own, and when I'm in my active pottery-making mode, I am, in fact, a little obsessed with the making of them. And while this particular one wasn’t made by me, it was one I loved dearly, and I’m sure most people won’t exactly be able to relate to the level of grief I felt about breaking it. I cried a good bit. I kind of hated myself for losing my grip on the poor thing. And I couldn’t bear to throw out the pieces. I had no idea what I would do with them—the mug was far beyond any hope of repair—but I gathered up as many pieces as I could, washed them carefully, and set them in a bowl on my kitchen counter, where they stayed for about a year and a half.

Over the next few days, I came across a shard or two of the worst kind—the little slivers that get stuck in feet or fingers and make them bleed. There weren’t many left at all—we did a pretty good job cleaning them up. But the ones I found hurt a lot, and they made me so sad all over again.

The other night, I was looking for a photo to use as a new blog header, and I kept opening photographs that were just like those little slivers of stoneware—painful reminders of something I’ve shattered. Unlike the mug, this shattering was done consciously. And somehow, that makes the shards feel that much sharper.

Eventually—just last fall—I had an epiphany about the shards of mug. It occurred to me that stoneware is fired well above the temperature at which I fire silver clay, which meant that I was easily able to incorporate those shards into my jewelry designs. I could create with this broken thing; I could transform the mug and my grief about it into something new and very beautiful.

Is grief always like that, on the other side? And is this what people mean when they say that you have to sit with grief? That you have to clean the shattered pieces, gather them into a bowl, and go about your life as best you can, taking whatever comfort you can manage in the knowledge that you needn’t throw out the pieces if you don’t want to?

And then one day, when you’ve seen that bowl so often that you’ve almost reached the point of no longer seeing it, you’ll glance in its direction, and you’ll see it as if for the first time, and with enormous joy, you’ll realize exactly what you saved those pieces for.

•happiness is a jerry-rigged screen door•

~ a hug from a neighbor

~ a sign on cardboard (FREE)

~ a blog post so Hallmark, it leaves a sweet aftertaste

and you, of course. Sorry to be so absent, during this month of crazy vacation and transition. :) What is your happy?

•really real•

Hoping for a glimpse of inhabitants, on the fairy hike in Harpswell, Maine (Great Island Cliff Trail).

•my maine point•

I kinda grew up here. I'm a vacationer, sure, but I have been for 33 years. It makes for some interesting emotions.

In the past 10 years or so, I've transitioned into a forager. From a folksinger to a mother to a grocery-store employee, sure, but really: from a citizen to a forager. It started with second-hand clothes. Then expanded into appliances, instruments, bread and vegetables. Then it was fruit. Now, it's shellfish. And I'm right back where I started, on the coast of New England.

Today was the first day of sun on our Maine vacation, and the toddler responded by puking all day (possibly because he caught a rotovirus from his cousin Ruby). I responded by picking up a couple of chicken lobsters at the local lunch n lobster--a place I'm shocked I didn't take advantage of until now. $5.99 a pound isn't bad for a half mile down the road.


Cooked the lobsters.


Cracked and ate them.

Popped their shells in with some chives, chipotles, and white wine. What amounts to 1.5 cups of liquid is now in the fridge, waiting for me to come home tomorrow with an adequate amount of cream and sherry. Cross your fingers. :)

Meanwhile, I'm experimenting with mussels. Are they actually good, foraged from the cove in which you sleep? Hmm... a blog post from a quick search recommended (!?) manky-smelling mussels, specifically from coves in Maine. And repeat rinses with salted fresh water. We shall see what happens. (Gotta love a guy who calls himself a "DB" (douchebag).)


The puking toddler sleeps.
The mussels, sans wine (because I drank it), are forthcoming. xox

House Rules, Hearts, and Half-Assed Love

When I was a child, the only real rule in our house was loosely derived from the book Summerhill, by A.S. Neill.* It was more or less this: You can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't hurt or annoy anyone else, and as long as you don't hurt yourself.

Even as a child, I found this rule elegantly simple and fascinating in breadth. It covered everything, really. As long as you weren't infringing on anyone else's rights, as long as you were acting with an eye to your own safety, you had pretty much absolute freedom to follow your heart.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There's a lot of talk these days (maybe especially in the bloggy world?) about following your heart. Or following your true path, erasing the word "should" from your vocabulary, getting unstuck in your life, etc. I suppose these aren't exactly new, blog-world-related themes—consider the idea of "finding yourself." I have no real evidence to support this, but I feel like that one's been around for forty or fifty years or more, like it goes hand-in-hand with the advent of beatniks and hippies and "following your bliss."

(Still, I'm clearly a product of my own generation—I find the current incarnation of these ideas far more appealing. Give me Jen Lemen's beautifully articulate musings on what it really means—and how painful it can be—to follow your heart, and her scrupulous commitment to honesty, kindness, hope, love, joy, and really seeing, over the seemingly somewhat simplistic "follow your bliss" any day.)

I believe in these things—as core values, really. I'd be the first one to tell friends to follow their own hearts, to be true to themselves. If a friend is feeling stuck, I'll tell her to make a change, even if it means ignoring how she thinks she "should" behave or risking the disapproval of others.

And on the surface of it, all of these ideas seem to fit in nicely with the house rule of my childhood. And yet, for all my unwavering support of friends, when it's about my own heart, I find myself wondering: Where are the edges? At what point does following my own heart crash headlong into someone else's needs? At what point do I decide that that simply has to be okay? At what point do I decide that it might be necessary to toss out the house rule, buckle my seat belt, and knowingly cause that crash? And if I cause it, how much damage will I have done in the long term?

How can I be at peace with following my heart, knowing that I’ve hurt someone else? Or that the person I’ve hurt doesn’t understand, or disapproves, or perhaps will even come to hate me?

Most of all, can I trust that truly following my own heart is a way of plugging into a kind of universal balance—that even if my actions hurt someone else's heart for a time, if I'm being as honest with myself as I can be about what I need, then it will all work out for the best for both of us?

I don’t have answers.

But I don’t believe we can afford to spend our lives with our hearts slightly broken by our own resistance to doing what feels right for ourselves. It’s no way to live a life, and frankly, it seems disrespectful to those who love us, because if our hearts aren’t well tended, we just don’t have access to all the love we’re capable of. The kind of love we all deserve to give and to receive.

Because as much as we love the half-assed around here, half-assed love is really never okay.

*Am I supposed to say something here about how clicking that link will not in any way earn us one cent--or any fraction thereof--here at HAMAMA? Okay then. Consider that done.

•delay•

Stuck in Arizona, and loving it a little. When they sleep, it is heaven, no matter where. xox