A Swan from the Start

The other day, I read a parenting post stating decisively that people shouldn't tell a little girl how pretty she is. Physical attributes, the thinking goes, are neither a good measure of a person nor permanent. The unstated judgement is that valuing appearance is shallow and leads to irreparable vanity. Instead we should praise her strength and intelligence and sense of humor and other more "laudable" traits. The goal is to teach self-worth based on character, not her body.

That sounds really good. I almost bought into it, until I looked into the mirror.

It's so easy for a child to latch on to the most ridiculous of ideas. For me it was the understanding that I'm not pretty. I never thought of myself as ugly, just unremarkable. I don't know the genesis of this thinking. It was probably a generic criticism, mixed in with the other flotsam of girlish competition. Unfortunately this one became entangled in all the other insecurities native to a young girl and fell to the floor of my consciousness, slowly seeping its particular poison through the years.

Looking back I can see subtle ways my behavior was shaped by this one idea. I ached to be pretty and found myself drawn to beautiful people, hoping their magic would dust off onto me. When it didn't, I withdrew into my mind and distanced myself from the disappointment that was my body. I neglected to value myself, and as a consequence didn't care for myself. Exercise was pointless. Beautiful clothes and jewelry were for beautiful people. I would just have to make do. Still, in my secret heart-of-hearts, I longed to be a princess, if only for one Cinderella night.

This doesn't mean I lacked all faith in myself. I took pride in my strength and determination and smarts. I was determined to make a difference in the world. But on the occasions that a man did -- miraculously, I thought -- notice me, I was careless with my body and my heart. I once asked a lover if he thought I was beautiful. He  prevaricated until finally admitting that he didn't. Despite my shredded heart I stayed. 

Over time I've learned to admire my parts. My college roommate taught me that every girl deserves pretty lingerie. My sister-from-another-mother has taken me shopping and shown me how to flatter my curvy figure. I've been given lessons in makeup, and compliments on my eyes. Sometimes, when I least expect it, I look in the mirror and find beauty there, wrinkles and dimples and spots and all. I am grateful for those moments.

To be honest, I don't know if thinking myself pretty would truly have changed anything. Still, I will tell my daughter every step of the way that she is smart and funny and strong and, yes, beautiful. I will tell her until she knows in every cell that both her mind and her body are to be cherished and respected and cared for. I will declare her beauty to the world and I will not be satisfied until she can do the same. 

Women of a Certain Age

I woke sobbing this morning, the voice of a newly dead man echoing in my head.

I always thought that becoming a woman of a certain age meant something joyful -- being no longer burdened by other peoples' judgements, and free to have adventures.

Instead it seems to mean saying goodbye. One friend has lost her mother. Another buried her father. Two friends have stood by as their mothers endured terrible complications from awful surgeries. My own mother has some health concerns. And the dead man? I don't know that I could have called him a friend, but he was kind to me when I was a child. When visiting my hometown I looked forward to running into him and catching up.

Remember being desperate to grow up? To understand the ripple of laughter that went around the room full of adults? As if being taller was the ticket to entering a special carnival full of shiny lights and amusements. Now I look around and ask: when does the fun start?

This gloom will pass. A good shamble this morning already has put me in a better mood. Still, I feel diminished by this, and so many other, deaths.

However my still-amorphous beliefs resolve themselves, I do believe I'll see again those I've lost, and become whole. Until then, a toast to those who have gone before.

Melancholy

Sliding sideways into melancholy

Voices in my ears don't help

Minor key songs with broken words

Evoke barely stitched wounds.

Sleep might salve a raw heart

but pillows echo the

sad thoughts that slip

out through tears

Until my dreams are

too damp and cold

to light.

On Our Knees

The play yard was quiet this afternoon. Parents nodded across the concrete, barely willing to acknowledge their horror on the sacred grounds of our elementary school. Strangers stood close, taking silent comfort in community. We waited, restless for the bell to ring, for our children to flood from the building, to embrace our little ones with desperate relief.

A father stood next to me. I watched as the bell shrilled and his daughter came running joyfully from the building, long hair flying, headband askew. He saw her and collapsed to his knees, unable to hold back his tears as he clasped her to him, whispering over and over "I love you so much".

We were all on our knees today. Praying. Or mourning. Brought down by fear. By horror. We were on our knees with helplessness and anger. Humbled by chance and circumstance and an embarrassing gratitude for our good fortune. Felled by sorrow and sympathy, or, for the truly unfortunate, empathy. 

I don't know where we go from here. I can think of no solutions. I have no answers. I do know I cannot, I will not, stay on my knees. I will rise up and carry on. I will hold tight to my children. And then I will loose them, that they may dance and sing and hurt and love and live. I will cherish them, and love them, and bless the days that I have with them. Because that is all I can do.

That Day

A customer told me. We were on the phone; I was trying to fix some inconsequential computer problem for him, and he told me the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I'm a long way from New York and the Twin Towers had never really been on my radar, so it took me a little while to understand. Soon we had a TV set up in a conference room and between calls we clustered around it, watching as the first impact was played and replayed, then the second. I remember being awed by the way in which the towers collapsed, floor dropping straight onto floor within spiky aluminum ribs, stacking in a strangely deliberate fashion, as if the whole thing was orchestrated by a demolitions expert. In a disaster movie the building would have swayed and splattered across the city, crushing everything around. This was graceful, even beautiful.

The announcers told us 50,000 people worked in each tower. I nearly vomited.

Within an hour we had been evacuated from our building, the tallest in Denver, and left to our own devices. I called my husband who reacted by focusing even more intently on his work. I got in my car and headed to the nearest blood bank. The only thing I could think to offer to the lost souls so far away was a part of my physical self, as if a pint of my blood could heal the savage wounds they had just suffered.

The drive down was quiet. I listened to NPR, hearing the same few words over and over and over. The roads were practically silent, drivers solicitous in our common shock. Everyone moved slowly, cautiously, feeling fragile. At the blood bank hundreds of us sat in clusters, united yet solitary as we waited for a cot. I buried myself in my book. I was exhausted by the repeating footage on the television, impatient for facts. I finished 500 pages while I waited. I have no idea what I read.

The technician wouldn't listen, insisted on my right arm. She poked and poked and poked me, unable to find a vein, distracted by her own shock. I said nothing, as if her shaking hands were my penance for the good fortune of living so far away. Finally, after the fourth or fifth try, she switched arms and the blood flowed like relief. Afterward I went home and puttered as the radio continued to spew nothingness, telling me again that 50,000 people worked in each of those buildings. 

There were no patients needing my donation. I've always wondered if it was even used.

I don't remember that evening, or the next few days. I worked. When I left the company years later I found a bad poem I had written the next day trying to make sense of the fact that I was there, working, making phone calls, fixing computer issues, while ash still fell and walls were increasingly obscured by grief on paper. My helplessness expanded to fill the hours in those weeks.

Sometime later we started hearing real numbers. 50,000 dropped to 20,000, then 15,000. My cousins were okay. 7,000 dead. Old friends found ways of saying they were safe. 5,000. I rejoiced in stories of reunion. Finally they decided that fewer than 3,000 died in the attacks.

That day was awful beyond compare. The weeks following were apocalyptic. I still duck when planes fly low over head. But gradually I have been saddled with a guilty sense of relief. It could have been so much worse.

Blue February

As I walked this morning I heard so many birds singing that I was reassured of the arrival of spring; the thought brought a (relieved) smile to my face. Later, however, I slipped back into a blue funk that has haunted me for days now. I don't know if it's February doldrums, or something hormonal, or maybe it's altogether unrelated to any of that. I do know that I am restless and frustrated, and I have been thinking poisonous thoughts about my children and husband in the wake of the slightest infraction. I just want to crawl into my bed and be ALONE, with no demands or expectations, no whining or complaining, and no responsibilities. I did get four errands run this morning, and three loads of laundry, and tonight I will sleep in clean sheets. Perhaps that will be enough to bring me out of it. Or maybe I just need a good cry. Until then, I think I'll ignore the laundry that needs folding, go take a shower and lose myself in a cheesy gothic romance novel.

Thoughts of Mortality and Farewell

Having just returned from a follow-up (and blessedly clean) mammogram, I am pensive this morning with thoughts of mortality and farewell. Three women in my family died last year. The turning of the calendar allows me to distance myself from that fact, as if the new year is distinct and free of the losses of the summer and fall. My sadness, however, stretches across the months and I find it difficult to approach my memories for fear they will overwhelm me.

Perhaps now, finally, I can write out the shards of goodbyes that have been sticking in my heart.

Jan died first. It wasn't unexpected -- she had been anticipating it for a long time, and from a distance her absence wasn't so noticeable.

Will and I visited Jan twice in her grotto in Connecticut. She was invariably cheerful and did her best to host us, although our little family unit is tremendously independent. The noise and suddenness of our young children alarmed her; at the same time it recalled for her the times she was called upon to help her oldest sister with childcare. She took such great pride in helping raise her nieces and nephews, and in all the descendants! Our cards and photos were arranged with care along the shelves of her tiny house, layered in front of one another so they became three-dimensional records of our aging. During our visits I didn't listen enough. I was distracted by the green of the trees and Jan's nervousness regarding my flighty children, so I have scant knowledge of the facts of her life. Instead I have impressions of determination and endless curiosity, of a liberated woman long before that was fashionable, of a life filled with celebrations in New York City, and peaceful times in Connecticut. And I have memories of her with each of my children: tentatively holding Violet, the first in the extended family to do so, and barely having time to embrace Sam, who was vibrating with excitement to go run around and explore that fantastical place. I am grateful for those memories, and saddened by the photos I never bothered to send because I was "too busy", although I know she would have been delighted.

Barb went next. I could say it was complications from a stroke, but really she was tired and the kind of lonely that comes from witnessing too many loved ones pass away.

I knew Barb only as a Grand Dame, rising from the death of two of her sisters to steer our large family in the stewardship of the Bane cabin. Family lore speaks of her mother holding court each Sunday with supper for four daughters, their assorted spouses, and eventually their children. I love the photos of Manna with her family arrayed around her in their Sunday best, cousins becoming nearly as close as siblings. That role fell to Barb late in life, long after the cousins and then second cousins had built separate traditions. Her presence still bound us, if only out of respect. Barb and I both had left Colorado - she to California, I for the East coast - so our relationship was truncated by geography. Yet she remembered my birthday each year with a card, and -- after we each returned to Denver -- with a brief phone call. Only now that I have a perpetually full calendar and often miss dates important to others do I appreciate the thoughtfulness of such gestures.

Finally bright Robin flew away too soon. What started as a surprising shortness of breath revealed itself as lung cancer that gave her a terribly short time to say goodbye.

Robin was on the other side of the family, far away, and I saw her only a few times. My strongest memory of her was a visit when I was tiny -- six, perhaps? My mother was forced by circumstance into a man's world, owning her own printing business and struggling alone to raise a child, which left little room for fashion and frills. Robin visited us, bringing her delightful California style, tall and lean and blond and girly in ways I'd never seen before, and she shared that with me, taking my little hands and painting my nails. I don't think I'd ever felt so glamorous. I doubt I even breathed for her whole visit, I was so awed.

Each of these remarkable women gave me, us, a final gift with their deaths -- they died the way they wanted to. Jan stayed in her home, conceding the need for assistance at the end, but never allowing the help to make her truly dependent. Barb chose her own way, seeing the consequences of failing health and instead setting a date, saying goodbye, and letting go when and how she wanted. And Robin celebrated to the end, adventuring and throwing parties and smiling that marvelous California smile.

I feel unworthy of my grief. To be honest I didn't know any of them particularly well, so my tears are more for myself than for them or the people most affected by their loss. Nonetheless, I want them back. Even knowing that I probably wouldn't pay any more attention to them resurrected than I did before, I feel that I am no longer whole without each one. My family, my life, is diminished without them.