“It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing…”

Duke Ellington

September. It’s a good month. A month of beginning. A month where life swerves from sunny to crisp. When school begins. Not just for kids. For all of us. Because we never really graduate, do we? No. We are always learning lessons, learning life. We are always working hard, studying stuff, aspiring for those A’s.

This summer, the big girls and I took Little Girl to the playground for her first swing. I threaded her toes through those holes in the black rubber seat. I rested her arms over the front. And then we pushed. We all pushed. And she went back and forth, up and down. And she smiled. Goodness did she smile.

And so I’ve been thinking about swings. About what a wonderful metaphor this is. Isn’t life really about swinging? Between Past and Present. Between Then and When. Between Now and Later. Isn’t life about sitting there, here, dangling dancing feet? Sometimes, we need that push. Sometimes, we are strong and secure and can pump our own legs. And fly high.

But, on life’s swing, isn’t it so hard to be still? Even when there is no one to push us, even when we do not hurl ourselves forward, the swing shimmies. Maybe this should be our goal, our quiet aim – to find some stillness. To stop. To quell our compulsion to move. We need not always move.

And on this swing that is life, do we ever go anywhere new? Or are we tethered, chained to that big bar above, that bar of who it is we are? Or is this maybe the greatest gift of all, to be anchored to people, to places, to purposes, to who it is we’ve come to be?

So much to ponder as we all swing into September.

Are you fond of September? How do you like the swing metaphor? Do you think it’s tough to find stillness in the context of modern life?

{Middle Girl before getting examined at the eye doctor. Pic has no real relevance to the post below, but I love it. She was very disappointed to learn that she does not need glasses. She was hoping to score a pair of specs to be like her big sister.}

This is one of those moments. I sit in a Starbucks by the girls’ camp. I just dropped them off.

I’m at a little table, facing out. People walk by, most of them hidden behind shades. Today’s supposed to be a scorcher. There are three women to my right talking – knowingly – about Manhattan private school admissions. From what I gather, one of them works at one of these schools. I can’t figure out which. I eschew my headphones and eavesdrop. We will apply Big Girl to school come fall.

A woman pushes a stroller by the window except it’s not a stroller. It is a double-decker dog carrier. There is one dog up top and one below and she walks another on a leash.

And I sit here, another blond behind another screen, watching. Watching and listening and wondering. Wondering about many things, too many things, but one thing slices through. It’s a word that toddlers love to ask. It’s a word that’s also a question.

Why?

Today I’m wondering why. Why I come to Starbucks and to this screen. Why I come to this blog. These things take me away from my girls, from the physical world, from my fiction. I trust myself enough to know that I would not come here, day after day, week after week, year after year, unless it was giving me something important.

Profound, even.

What is it though? What does this blog give me? Yes, this is just another way of asking that question I ask again and again, that I will always ask: Why do I blog? It’s a question I implore all of you to ask if you blog. Why do you do it? Why do you put yourself out there? Why do you float pieces of yourself and your struggles into the ether? Why?

It is a question I implore you to ask even if you do not blog. Why do you do the things you do? Do you do them for more negative reasons? Because you need an escape? Because they’ve become habit? Because you are scared to stop? Because you don’t know what else you’d do?

Or do you blog – or do whatever else – for positive, if elusive, reasons? Because they are part of your identity and your evolution? Because they enhance your essence? Because they allow you to reach others, and by extension, your greater self? Because by doing these things you are excavating the soil of who it is you are?

Today my head is knotted with these questions. To look at me you wouldn’t know. You’d see another chick at Starbucks ducking behind a laptop. You’d see someone writing something in fits and starts. Someone who looks up from time to time. At the women chatting, at the citizens strolling, at the silly dog mobiles going by. You wouldn’t know that beyond the blue eyes and blond hair and furrowed brow are a steady stream of questions.

Today I honor the questions. The messy and marvelous questions that beautifully mar my mind and moments. Today I ask these questions of myself, as a way of keeping things honest and fresh. As a way of keeping myself in line. Why do I come here?

I come here because this is my place. I come here because I can think here. And ask. I come here because adulthood and family and world have a way of sucking the individuality and childish spirit from our marrow and I will not have this. I will carve out a little space for myself and keep it sacred. I come here because otherwise I really might not ask these questions. And these questions? They are part of who I am. And hope to be.

And now. Now I ask this very question of you: Why do you come here to my blog?

Do you come here because you like to share in my successes and struggles? Do you come here because I offer a glimpse into a world you will never know? Do you come here because you are curious about parenthood or personhood or publishing? Do you come here because I make you think or ask or feel? Do you come here because you know me in real life and want to know what I’m up to? Do you come here because you don’t like me and you want to watch me stumble? Do you come here because you like that I’m insecure just like you?

Why?

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Why do you blog? Why do you come to my blog? Even if you do not normally comment, I would so appreciate your thoughts here. I plan to leave this post up for a few days because I really want to know what brings you to blogging, and what brings you here to this particular place. (And also because I really need a bit of a break.) I plan to spend my mini pause visiting your blogs and responding to your comments because I miss doing these things tremendously.

“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”

William Faulkner

Dad died three years ago.

A simple, sturdy sentence. One that’s true. Without frills.

I read this sentence, my sentence, and still, it doesn’t quite sink in. That he is gone, really gone, and that he has been gone for not one, not two, but three whole years. Am I still in denial? I doubt it, but maybe. I think that something else is at work here. I have a theory.

I never said goodbye.

I was there the evening before he left us. We all were. By his side. I held his hand, limp, almost lifeless. I said many things. Things about how he could let go, finally let go, how we would be okay, how we would take care of Mom. These were impossible, but important things to utter.

But there was one word I refused to say: Goodbye. There was something too final about this word. Something wrong about it. Because I think I knew even then, full of life (Middle Girl was brewing in my belly), awash in tears, steeped in sadness and strength, that Dad would always be in my life. Even if he was gone.

And he is. Gone. In the most literal sense of the word. He no longer sits at the head of the long, wooden table, laughing, telling some silly story for the umpteenth time, pontificating about humans and nature and Leopold and lunch-pails. He no longer dons that Irish fishing hat to walk the dogs in the early morning. He no longer hangs up the phone, his voice drifting into some profound and inky distance, “Morn, morn.”

But he is not totally gone. No. He is here. In my thoughts and my dreams. In my whispers and my words. In my memories and my mannerisms. In my blood and the blue eyes of three little girls.

Today, I’m sad. Of course. But I’m also oddly thankful for my grief. For how it has changed me. For how it has shrouded me with gratitude and awareness and perspective. For how it has made me feel more fiercely. For how it has rendered me a more nuanced person and parent and thinker and writer. For how it has made me a more complicated creature. Because it has. And does.

Grief is a tricky, boundless thing. It seeps and stains, burrows and blinds. But it also brings texture and meaning and beauty. It’s taken me three years to realize this, to get here, but I’m here.

Three years later. I miss him. Quietly. Madly. Differently. Even still. But time and thought continue to work their wild and woolly wonders. Acceptance is beginning, just beginning, to alight.

I never said goodbye. I don’t think I ever will.

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Would you choose grief over nothing? Have you experienced hard things in your life that have changed you profoundly? Is three years long or short or both?

“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody”

Mark Twain

There is a side of me. Maybe just a sliver. It is darker, grayer, swirled and saturated with shadow. There are thoughts and questions and memories there, here, on this side, in that sliver. There is sadness and anger and regret and fear and bitterness and… more, I imagine.

I imagine because I don’t truly know. When Twain says we are all moons, that we all have dark sides which we never show anybody, I think that means we don’t even show ourselves. Is this possible? Is it possible that we have sides or slivers of ourselves of which even we, the moons, are unaware?

I think so.

Some might be bothered by this. By this notion that there is a darkness within each of us, a darkness which cannot be mapped out, or fully known. But not me. I am not bothered. I am intrigued. I am curious. I am thankful for all sides, all slivers. I am emboldened by the idea that there is more of me than even I know.

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Do you buy the idea that we all have sides or slivers (dark, light, etc) that we never show anybody, including ourselves? Is this just another way of saying that there are limits to our knowledge of self and other?

“Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?”

Edward Young

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, I was a little tomboy who wore a Larry Bird jersey to my fifth grade class every time the Celtics had a home game.

Once upon a time, I played the trumpet in an all-boys jazz band and soccer on an all-boys soccer team.

Once upon a time, I made little earrings out of plastic airplanes.

Once upon a time, I asked questions like: What is self?

Once upon a time, I ate mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches and composed songs about Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s bald head.

Once upon a time, I was an original, wacky thing.

Today.

Today I am a thirty-something quasi-bottled blonde. A wife and mother who wears black yoga pants and buys toys and organic produce and stresses about sleep and safety and baby weight.

Today I go on “date night” with Husband and love manicures and pedicures and when my kitchen is clean.

Today I long for the quintessential things: health and happiness. For them. For me.

Today I bemoan the passage of time, how it tricks me and tames me, of how fast it flies.

Today, I am in some ways, so many ways, a copy.

How did this happen?

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Do you agree with the quote above, that we lose our originality as we grow older? Is this just part of growing up or does it say something sinister about conformity? How do you retain some modicum of originality in your adult life?