Feeling Wonder-Full

For some reason, when I woke this morning, I reached for last year's weekly calendar and thumbed through late July and early August, reading the two- or three-sentence reflections I'd written in each day's space.  As I read, what struck me wasn't the emergence of a cancer storyline so much as the steady presence of wonder.

Mixed in with all the MRIs, prognoses and appointments were lots of wonderful moments, marked in blue ink: "Just a beautiful, beautiful day. . . lovely day. . . a nice a.m. thunderstorm. . . beautiful sky. . .  great walk. . . a very nice first day back at school. . . cuddled with mom. . . Holmes Lake. . . Jamaica Trail. . . Branched Oak. . . laid on the patio and looked at the sky. . . enjoyed seeing neighbors on this beautiful day. . . the chrysalis became a monarch!"

I don't know why wonder is my steady companion but I welcome its company.

. . . which is why I welcomed everyone's eclipse stories this week.  Usually, wonder is a solitary experience, a moment of heightened awareness in which we are hugged by our surroundings.  That millions of us got hugged Monday afternoon felt like a tremendous gift and I couldn't get enough of it.  I'm not prone to tears, but I found myself welling up as I perused people's post-ecliptic Facebook musings.  Over and over, I read or listened to others' words of wonder and enjoyed a vicarious jolt of joy.

Boy, did we need a little wonder this week, eh?

And yet, witnessing the eclipse with my childhood friends--while truly awesome--was only one moment of wonder for me this week.  Thumbing through this year's calendar notes, I was reminded that I'd shimmered at least three times in the past week.

A few evenings ago, standing in a field of shoulder-high grasses--my fingers still sticky from ice cream--I happened upon a praying mantis as big as my hand.  I stared in awe while Allison and Mark backtracked to admire this beautiful creature with me. On our short drive back from East Campus, I had the strange sensation of my limbs floating above everything.

Again, Sunday morning, after a most violent night of storms, wonder found me, this time in Quinn Chapel, a small, mostly-black church on 9th Street.  Our church's women's board was spending the morning at Quinn, both at worship and at a lunch to follow.  There in the third pew,  Rev. Karla Cooper's words washed over me, painted in vibrant, staccatoed tones, and I was aglow.  The meal that followed was a gift, too.

I am so hungry to find a way through these times, to build bridges, to peel back the privilege of my own skin and rest under the cool shade of a tree with odd bedfellows.  The eclipse reminded me that, every so often, we get to do just that--to share wonder on a grand scale.  But the rest of my week? That's where I find the most hope--in those small moments of daily wonder when my eyes are opened and my heart lets in a little something that shifts me.

Whatever It Is, It Ain't Privilege

Forty-five years ago, I found the rock in this photo.  I love this otherwise unremarkable rock and the smooth finish my rock tumbler gave it. As a kid, I loved all kinds of rocks--still do.  And my prized rock tumbler, as they'd say in education, took my finds from good to great.

Rock tumblers are not for the impatient, though.  It took a month of waiting, a month of adding grit, a month of motion to transform this rock into its current, smooth iteration.

I'm pretty sure Donald Trump never owned a rock polisher. . . which is too bad, because the man could have used some grit in his early life, some opposing, outside force that required both his participation and his patience.

This, I've decided, is the bane of the so-called privileged. They lacked rock tumblers as kids.

I've been thinking a lot about privilege lately, mainly in the context of our president, who--on paper only--is a 70-year-old man. And I've come to believe that privilege is the wrong word for this thing that frames him.  Absence comes a little closer, I think.

As one of the very rich, Trump leads an insular life of immunity, moving through his days untouched by law or leper.   That absence of contact, though, comes with a cost, and it comes early.  What did he lose when his young life had no grit in it, nothing to move in opposition to his thoughts, his needs, his experiences?  I believe he lost the ability to connect with others and, as a result, he lost some of his own humanity.

And such absence--this gaping, gilded maw--does not a great leader make.

Same Song, Second Verse

For the record, I was married on July 15, 1989. Not that I remembered the date when it rolled around this year.  But my forgetfulness had nothing to do with disinterest.  I'm nuts about Mark.  And Eric and Allison, as well. They are three major components in this awesome life of mine.

But, when I look at this photo--one taken just a year ago when we visited Rocky Mountain National Park--my emotions are complicated.  About three weeks after this photo was taken, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And about a month after that, my mom died.

So you can forgive me if this photo is difficult for me.  I look at it now, and I find myself saying "I had cancer then!  Did some part of me know that I was sick,  that I'd be radiated and motherless in two months?"

So, yeah, anniversaries have become. . . complicated for me. This year, they represent bookmarks that signify "Before" and "After," in really big ways.

But this year also marks my first anniversary with the Tribe.  Yeah, I'm in a tribe. And it is an extensive, powerful group that should not be trifled with.

So. Don't. Even.

When I was pregnant with Eric, I remember local journalist and mentor Betty Stevens telling me that, after giving birth, I would be forever changed.  That I would become part of some secret tribe.  And, sure enough, it happened, just as she said it would.  I am not the same person that I was before Eric was born.

Lo and behold, I joined another tribe after my diagnosis.

Same song, second verse.  A little bit louder and a little bit worse.

Just in the last three weeks, I've met with three awesome members of The Tribe.  One, an artist, painted a piece I'd hung in our house just a week before meeting her.  And she had bought my own mother's artwork a few months before that.

Isn't that strange?  And marvelous?  All these weird connections, seemingly made without either of us knowing. . . and I found myself wondering if some molecular part of us knew that we'd be meeting each other and had prepared for that meeting via artwork.

It boggles my mind, and makes me love this life even more.

That same day, I met with another friend, another member of the Tribe.  Over beers, we moved through shared stories of surgery and chemicals, light and pills until it was just . . . us.   Changed but the same.

And, yet again this morning, under a heavy sky, I met with MB, one more member of the Tribe. Over breakfast, we shared our stories and, at times, sat gape jawed, admiring the way so many circles had become concentric just when we needed them to touch us most.

That's the thing about the Tribe.  We speak the same language, even if we took different roads in learning it.  And I am so very grateful that I have found others who know these words, who recognize this thing that we share.

True, a year ago,  I may have known nothing about my future, sitting there at the lake's edge.

But it is equally true that I also know nothing about my future right now, here with my dog, sitting in my kitchen, waiting for Mark to come home.

That is the nature of this life, us sitting next to the unknown, smiling into a camera held by some stranger who, one day, might end up in our Tribe.

If only we can be so lucky.