Two people who write far better than I do, and who also reach a much larger audience responded to my post about the writer’s workshop to let me know they too had applied and did not get into the program they’d applied to–these were kind, generous, encouraging notes. I got another one with a lovely story about being an alternate and in the end, finding out he would get to do what he had applied for.  It was a completely life-altering turn in the path for this person.

Then, over the past couple of days, I have been privileged to read some work that just takes my breath away.  One is a new book called My Bright Abyss.   It is luminous and piercing. I keep stopping along the way, thinking, this, this is why I keep wanting to push with my own writing, this is the kind of reverent way of words I want to follow.  In a different way, I found myself wanting to grow up to be like Russell Brand who wrote this piece about Margaret Thatcher.  Such mastery of the language — not so much piercing as able to cut through so many layers of myth and wishful thinking.  This morning, who moved me was Andrew Sullivan.  His blog post made me want to go to a Megachurch and regret not having met someone I thought of with some disdain for years.  Finally, there was this piece that has helped me reconsider some of the writing projects I have dreamed of.

The nudges forward come in many different shapes and shades.  Today, it is enough, and in fact, more than enough, to receive the gift of beautiful, powerful, amazing words.

María at Whispering Pines
April 9. 2013

Friday: The E-Mail From BARC
Another good day! Yay! [María] completed ALL assignments. She got 100% on her spelling test and 90% on her math test. This is the first time she’s come home with high scores since the transition to high school. She has a big smile and is proud of herself. I am proud of her as well. She is good to go for whatever you guys have planned.

Sunday: Messing Around
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I rushed out of church to play.  My friend C and I went off to meet our two spouses for what I can only describe as the South Florida suburban version of Babette’s Feast, a Danish brunch at Vienna Cafe out in Davie that was delectable.  I even knocked back a couple of shots of aquavit with the herring and grav lax, something I haven’t done in years!

The rain was coming down, it was grey and nasty outside, and when we got back from such a lovely feast, it was time for our girl to come over.  Her daddy had claimed full control of the TV so María and I crawled up on Sherod’s and my new-old bed to watch an episode of Dr. Who.  This particular one involves reptilian/humanoid creatures that keep sucking humans into the center of the Earth.  We both had fun getting startled and when it was over, I put that ginormous height of our new mattress to good use. I quietly slipped my feet over the side and slowly started to slide down and out of the bed,  yelling for help because the Earth was swallowing me up too.  Maria pulled and hung on and tried for all she was worth to keep me from going under until finally I had slipped all the way down into a heap on the floor, laughing so hard my sides ached and tears ran down my face.

I looked up from the floor, and there was her beautiful face right over mine.  One of the things I fell in love with when I met my daughter was this:  if María is really and truly and thoroughly delighted, she scrunches up her nose in the most delicious way imaginable.  I hadn’t seen that kind of merriment in her face for a long, long time.  Like me, she laughed so hard, she struggled to catch her breath.  And when she could, said, “¡Otra vez, Mami. Otra vez!”–do it again, Mom, do it again.  I would have done it forever.

Tuesday Morning
I had my coffee early this morning, threw on some clothes and headed to BARC in time to pick up María to take her to her school.  She was well groomed, wearing one of the new dresses we got at Tar-get (French pronunciation, please) to wear to her new school.  We sang part of the way and the rest of the way she was a chatterbox, telling me all kinds of stories about her teacher, and how she is going to make AB Honor Roll and I’m going to drive our little church bus full of people over to Whispering Pines for the Honor Roll awards ceremony she’ll get to be in, how she’s learning to play the piano and how her teacher, Mr. Dixon, believes in her.  I believe in her too.  I believe that we do get those second and third and fourth and endless chances and when we can seize them, life is so sweet it makes you scrunch up your nose in delight.

Early this year, I found out about a program in Minnesota, a writer’s workshop that lasts a week in July.  To participate, you fill out an application form and submit a sample of your writing. It races across cyberspace to a place I hear is beautiful and then it is gone, you’ve unclenched your fist and let a dream and your work fly free.  As I hit the send button, I wondered if my words would come back having achieved the purpose for which they were intended, or if they’d come back to me empty.

I got word today.  Not quite a yes, not quite a no.  I am an alternate, so if someone is not able to attend and I am on the right place in the list, I will get to go.  I was also strongly urged to keep applying—maybe that’s part of the process. I know a lot of programs where you need to be persistent and not get discouraged the first time you get a no.  I’ve left my name in the hat and I will keep applying.  I am also disappointed.

I wish had been accepted.  That competitive streak in me easily slides into a small quiet sentence that insinuates itself into my comings and goings:  “you aren’t good enough.”  I had applied because, much as I love writing these posts, it feels like it’s time to push my writing beyond what is now familiar and comfortable.  I want to know if I can do more.  I want to test this part of who I am in new ways.  The thing is, after a pretty bruising winter, the hope of hearing a yes outside of me became even more important.  I began to think that a yes that was not mine was what made the risk worthwhile.  I wish I had been accepted and I wonder if there is something else for me to learn in this in-between space.

A week ago today, I was just this side of being a part of the Walking Dead.  Holy Week was especially taxing this year and I was beat.  I sat in our living room, all my good intentions to do housework in as much disarray as my house. Instead of cleaning the fridge of all the science experiments thriving inside, I watched a movie, Jiro Dreams of Sushi.  It is an elegant, thoughtful exploration of the vocation of a sushi chef in Japan whose small, unprepossessing restaurant in a subway station has earned a 3-star rating from Michelin.  A food critic, reflecting on Jiro and why he is a master chef , says that Jiro sets the standard for personal discipline.  He always looks ahead—what he serves has to taste better than the last time he served it.  He is never, ever satisfied with his work.  Jiro is impatient and Jiro is passionate.

That’s a good set of guiding principles that push back on my temptation to yield to insecurities and vanity. After a good hard walk this evening, I am back trying to figure out what I can do instead of the opportunity I more than likely won’t get this year.   I am not satisfied with my writing. I am impatient to get on with it.  I love getting to do this work. I welcome, in fact, I very much need suggestions about other ways I can do this mo’ better, more deep.  More.

I usually wake up around 4:00-4:30 in the morning. Some days, I sneak some time catching up on Dr Who, or another program I like called Torchwood. I have an iPad and sit in the quiet and dark of our living room enjoying my version of TV time while Sherod, the dogs and the cat get the last couple of hours of sleep. It is supposed to be my time for prayer and reflection and I had let that slip away from me so instead it became my time for worrying, rehashing, a space to allow my anxiety (and some resentment) to ratchet up. Not a great way to start one’s day, for sure!

For many years, I used one of modernity’s contraptions–a coffee pot with auto brew so I could wake up to a hot cup of coffee. I felt virtuous every night I actually got the coffeemaker set to brew for the following day. “If nothing else,” I’d think, before sleep found me, “I will wake up to a cup of hot coffee tomorrow morning. My day has not been a total waste”. Then, as a result of some back and forth conversation about coffee, and the realization that I come from coffee country, I decided to try to up my coffee game. I purchased a Chemex brewer (the tall glass contraption pictured above). And a Hario ceramic burr coffee grinder (that’s the glass and black plastic gizmo). I brought back roasted coffee from Panamá, coffee that comes from the farm where I used to play hide-and-seek with my cousins when we were growing up. I found the coffee measuring spoon my dear friend Barbara gave Sherod and me years ago. The mug is my favorite, just the right size, just the right colors, just the right shape–just right in every way imaginable. Thus, a new morning ritual emerges.

I get up and put a small kettle to boil. I grind the coffee–some mornings are harder than others because I guess I have some arthritis or something on my thumb and it hurts to keep the grinder on the counter while I do the grinding. But whatever pain it generates is more than offset by the astoundingly rich and delicious aroma that greets me. There are times I stop and simply inhale. I could get high on that smell, I swear! There are other careful steps I need to take: rinsing the paper filter, timing the first coffee bloom, carefully pouring the hot water into the Chemex and then allowing it to filter through. Especially, I am careful to wash, dry and put away the roaster so coffee oils won’t build up and go rancid on me. In all, it takes me about 20 minutes start to finish.

I have to be careful and attentive. It takes some effort and patience–this isn’t like it used to be, where I could stumble into the kitchen and pour my coffee without hardly opening my eyes. But taking that first sip of the coffee is pure and simple glory that fills me with gratitude. And because this is probably as much about God and grace as ritual, the gratitude moves me almost effortlessly into prayer. Trying to find God in everything. Especially the small things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx-Ae5wnNZs

The Two of Us at Seasons 52
April 1, 2013

On the day we had to Baker Act María last spring, I was so angry I took most of the morning off from work and went on a tear through her room.  I was angry at her, for sure.  But more than anything, I was so incredibly angry at the way things had happened, how much had gone wrong, how no matter how hard we tried to do right by her, the forces of darkness and chaos always seemed to win.  Her room was filled with flotsam, jetsam, legan and derelict everywhere you looked.  I had long since stopped trying to keep it a little girl’s room and had simply redrawn the line at no food and drink.  Now I was determined that it was all going, every single last bit of the junk was going out. I wanted to see the floor. I wanted a chair I could sit in if I felt like it. I wanted surfaces I could dust and clean.  I wanted a bed made with hospital corners and sheets tucked in tight enough to allow a coin to bounce.  The wonderful little cat quartet her Uncle Lenny had given her needed to be all lined up and the G*)  D%!!J drawers of her dresser closed for the first time in years.

I was a whirling dervish that day and before I was over, I had slammed furniture from one place to another in the room. It wasn’t enough to have sorted what mattered from trash.  I needed to reclaim the room even more, place the furniture where I wanted it, to have that much control in the middle of having none at all.  I can still conjure up the white-hot rage that stung my lungs, my eyes, my mouth, that burned me to my soul.

All that happened almost a year ago now.  Tomorrow morning, I am getting up early to drive to BARC to pick up the girl who begins a new school adventure at Whispering Pines, another “learning center” that we are trying next.  Tonight, Sherod and I took Maria out for a nice dinner and she was just this side of a motormouth, chattering and bubbling over with excitement about the new school.  She was happy, funny, gracious, an absolute joy to be around.  On the way back from the restaurant we sang along to I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas.  When we got to BARC she ran off to her Zumba ‘esercise’ class, reminding me over her shoulder that I should not be late in the morning.

Not that the hell has not continued, at least intermittently for her and for us, but that she is still in my life, that she is safe and so are we, that driving away doesn’t tear me apart like it used to, that yesterday morning, she donned a choir robe and sang with the choir at St Ambrose like she was just a kid, a regular, beautiful kid who loves to sing.  My prayer tonight and my prayer on the way to the new school tomorrow will be the same:  Oh God of second chances and new beginnings-here we are again.