Rust

I wrote a little note to read at the reception of two friends of mine who were married a couple of weeks ago.  This is a pair who I love and who happen to be on a terribly enchanting honeymoon right this minute in the forests and mountains of western Canada, being, as they have always been - both independently and together - adventurous and appreciative of every little small thing.   They are among my host of favorites and have generously given me permission to share this with you.  Thanks, friends. 

-------

There is a little shop in Moab, Utah that sells crafts and other works made by local artisans.  Each time Craig and I have gone camping in that area, we’ve popped in the store to have a look around.  Invariably – as is true in all parts of the southwest, I think - there are a number of art pieces composed of mixed metals: old bike gears and chains, scraps of galvanized steel and maybe a washer or two thrown in somewhere.  Most parts show definite prior use – the edges of the gears are worn smooth, the chains are clunky, and the washers are pock marked and could never lay straight.  And yet, in each case, the artist has intentionally chosen that specific object as a component in order to create something of new interest and new value.  And even in their altered form, each of those components is still completely identifiable.  Each metal piece remains as it formerly was - rusty and bent and imperfect – and yet the new creation, as a whole, is a marvelous and whimsical thing.

Jennifer and Jacob, welcome to your new adventure.  Welcome to a lifetime of being welded to something broken.  

I say this with a smile, because it’s as true for you as it is for Craig and I as it is for every couple anywhere.  There’s no other way to do marriage, and most often it’s in this brokenness that we get to see the extraordinary nature of love done well.  

In these initial months and years, I challenge you to develop the habit of thinking on your individual brokenness, not in a manner to weigh you down, or discourage you, but in order that you are able to see more fully how good and beautiful it is to be on the receiving end of such love.  Humble people don’t have pride to be hurt or inconsequential arguments to win, and, I’d wager that they experience a deeper sense of joy than the rest of us.  In marriage, winning is never the goal.  Perfection is never the goal.  Showing love... that is always the goal. 

Love might take physical form as a comforting embrace.  Or a hard conversation.  Or laughing so hard that you pee a little.   But like any of its incarnations, genuine love can only emerge from a heart of humility. 

During these initial days, you will hear that marriage is a hard work, that it contains difficult stretches to be endured and will require more restraint and patience than you imagine.  I admit that this can be true.   But if you can practice being clear with your expectations and gentle with your judgment, it can be as whimsical and lighthearted as art made from tea kettles and tire irons.   If you can learn to love each other well in the seemingly small, everyday ways, the big challenges will seem less daunting.   You are broken – both of you, and all of us.  But today marks the beginning of your brokenness taking the shape of something beautiful - and I’m warning you - amidst the work and the patience and your sacrifice, it’s going to be a terrible amount of fun. 

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Also, happy belated anniversary to Craig, my best and most forgiving friend.  Let's do ten more, just to be sure.

Home

There are five massive screen doors in the open living area of what has been our off-and-on home here in Maine.  On a clear morning, the warm glow from the maple trees on the lakefront and the ethereal, bright rays of dawn pour into this glass room in yellow and green shards, beginning at the earliest hour and somehow continuing to channel prisms of light deep into the evening.  Even when I am right here, asleep on the very couch I sit perched upon now, I dream of this room. 

In reality, this cabin is made up of about one third glass, with the remainder composed of v-match, vertical pine panels with a slightly tinted polyurethane finish.  It is bright and open and is life-giving in the way of an enormous, tight hug.  On my first night back here in early June, what must have been hundreds of insect wings beat frantically against the dark expanse of wire window screen and the resulting sound was that of a pounding torrent of rain, rather than the quiet presence of the still, cool evening breeze that moved into and through the room where I sat. 

Home. 

I dare say it is the single most comforting thing on earth.  It is as soothing as a lullaby, as essential to our souls as oxygen to the lungs, and as impossible to pin down as an easterly wind.

I’m realizing more and more that home isn’t a specific place, a particular building, or even an individual set of circumstances.  Home is like a rhythm that only your soul will recognize, like a melody that you hear with your ears, and only upon its hearing can you identify it as the song which has always existed somewhere inside of you.   From the very first note, you feel your footsteps fall into place with the beat, as if the music was born at the very same instant that you were.

This past Saturday night, after putting Milo to bed, I found myself, as usual, doing a late night exercise circuit:  walk; squat; pick up a wooden car; repeat.  When I had finished, I stood in our open living room, did a small, but very stylish wiggle, and declared myself the LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.  You see, on this particular day, one of my very favorite friends, Jenn, entered into her new big wedded adventure, and it all took place in my seasonal backyard.  It was a day full of frenzy and running from place to place like a sugar-pumped six-year-old in a room full of puppies, and yet, also a day of incredible beauty and peace and – you guessed it, my favorite buzzword – community.  It was community at its best: purposeful and hilarious and exceedingly life-giving.  Saturday was also, as Craig said multiple times throughout the weekend, a terribly frighteningly day to be a spore-producing plant, but since we only eat ferns in the spring, and I only occasionally make my bed in the moss, it was nothing other than an enchanting day sandwiched between two very magical ones, filled with greenery from the forest, and I cannot imagine anything on this natural earth more perfect than that.

Due to our relational overlap with dear Jenn and her husband, Jacob, it was also an opportunity to welcome a number of friends back to camp.  I think of this group of people as something like our own personal traveling circus, like the band getting back together.  Every individual falls into place amongst the rest, and we each become a unique part of what feels to be one single working body. 

In this community of people, I hear my melody.  They sing my song.  They beat out my rhythm, and my feet follow suit.  But they aren’t the only ones.  This isn’t the only place.  The expression of home has a wild, wandering voice.

During my first trip to the red rocks of the dry southwest, I heard it.  Hidden amidst the mossy pines nearest the southern shore of Heald Pond, I sense it.  In the tiny embrace of my son, I recognize it.  In the gaze of my fellow adventurer, my husband, I am enraptured by it.

As much as this particular room, with its bright warmth and its air thick with joy and memory, would beckon me to label it the ultimate definition of home, I cannot.  I am afraid that if I give in to the notion that home is one certain atmosphere or one specific structure, I will lose something precious.  I will have surrendered myself to the unnecessary reality of loss, to the weight of grief at a house sold or an empty nest, or as I know it, a little cabin in the woods seen from the rear-view mirror.  I will attempt to turn my ear, rather, to listen at each fork in the road, because the sound may come drifting as a working collection of feelings and faces experienced in blueberry pancakes, or mist on the river, or the giddy chortle and short-bitten fingernails of my sister.  I will listen for it in the daunting truth that for each of us, our best and most dear friendship may still be yet to come.  I will seek to embrace its elusiveness, it’s mystery and it’s unpredictable nature.

Our move-back date occurs next week, and I know that I won’t be ready for it until it’s happened.  Or rather, until I’m back in New Hampshire, and have gotten a large enough quantity of hugs to remind me that it is a place that is also good, that it is also mine, and that it is also home. 

The expression of home is as impossible to pin down as an easterly wind.  

This room is not the only room. 

My sound of Home:

Artist: Sleeping At Last
Album: Atlas: Space II – EP

Under Construction

I recall waking up on the morning of C and I’s wedding.  It was a dreamy, blue-skied, warm day in early September, and I had this thought:

It’s Sunday.

There was no euphoria.  No blissful haze.  No romance-induced fog.  No “jitters”.  There was only a sleepy, strangely normal, terra-firma confirmation of reality, of recognition: It’s Sunday.  And I have to pee. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my husband more than a fat kid loves cake (is it even ok to still use that phrase?).  I loved him then, fully and completely, though in a smaller way, similar to how you can occupy a studio apartment fully, and then somehow a two bedroom cabin, then a 2,000 square foot house, and then wonder how in the world you managed to get from A to B.  I loved him.  I was fully invested, only with different square footage.   And I hope that just like the Winchester Mystery House, we continue to be under construction until the day we die (in a blaze of glory, of course, together, base jumping, somewhere completely fabulous).

Stairway to nowhere, anyone?

With all of that said, I woke up that morning under no delusion that there was a glass slipper somewhere, and a prince waiting to wedge my hot, swollen toes into it, which would actually look really gross.  Yes, there would be a handsome guy waiting for me later that afternoon (and for every appointment/date/carpool/opportunity to leave the house following), but dangit, it was just another Sunday.  I had to pee.  Am I making this clear enough?  It was a day like so many others, and it was certainly starting the same way.  I will say that it felt strange and different that I would in fact, be getting married that afternoon: strange and different and surprisingly anticlimactic.  It's likely that someone out there has put their head in their hands and deemed me completely heartless, but I don't feel bothered.

And here we are.  I’m due with the baby we’ve been calling Swimmy on this coming Sunday (I’ve apparently cultivated a thing for scheduling life events on the Sabbath), and with absolutely no expectation of actually birthing a child during that predicted 24-hour period, I am still confronted by the idea that – hold the phone – this writhing, aquatic, and so far cooperative being will soon be spit out into the world and onto the map of our lives, pink and screaming and primed to deliver some exceptionally nasty poop.  I am pretty sure that it will be simply another day, as extraordinary as the events will likely feel.  And if I were a betting woman, I would wager that at some point I will find myself thinking, “How in the world did this just happen?”

This is life though, isn’t it?  I can’t begin to number the conversations with friends or family or perfect strangers that have included that sort of phrase.  How did I get here?  When did this all happen?  We don’t suddenly wake up with 3 kids and a dog, a corner office, a career as a newscaster, or government food stamps in our wallet, but sometimes it feels that way.  As much as C and I have tried to prepare for a child in practical ways, you know – with a crib, blankets, therapy sessions on tape – I’m realizing that we cannot

                                                                 really 

                                                                         be 

                                                                            prepared.  

      

source

No more than a person could ready him or herself for an alien invasion or for finding zero peanut butter at the grocery store could we ready ourselves for the person that is about to land his rocket ship in the middle of our living room.  

In light of all of this, the mantra that I have been continuing to tell myself is:

Don’t sweat it.  

Don’t lose your mind over the things you can’t even wrap it around, and quit thinking you can hold back the Pacific Ocean with a couple of sandbags.  It’s huge.  It’s coming.  It's unstoppable.

So bowl me over, little guy.  Land your rocket ship in my living room and poop on our carpet.  Make me wonder how in the world we got here.  And grow our love-house an extra room, while you’re at it.  

Down The Rabbit Hole

As I was sweeping cabins earlier today,  I got to thinking, "Good-night, M, if you don't post something on that silly blog of yours soon, they'll all suspect you've gone off the deep end".  They'll wonder if you've finally become a forest dwelling, ax-swinging nut with a propensity for off-roading in inappropriate vehicles and having long [audible] conversations with herself.

Phew.  Glad I've avoided that.

My brainchild occurred only a an hour or so after Helen, a new (and awesome) year-long staffer, pulled a mouse out of the washing machine.

And the thought came just a little while before my husband and two of our neighbors/co-workers/fellow woodsman went outside to try and shoot a skunk that is living in our woodpile.

A woodpile located directly below our front deck,

which also happens to sit right outside my office window.

Fine, the woodpile basically is my office window.

While the chase ensued, I tackled my own challenge: eating half of a watermelon.  This comes to no one's surprise.

Why is no one surprised?  Because eating entire melons and chasing woodland creatures is beginning to feel normal.  The strange-but-true reality of life here has slowly pulled a foggy haze over my perceptions of what to should expect out of a day.

For example, I've recently managed to:

• overflow the pot in the Bunn coffee maker, multiple - ok, dozens - of times.  
• shake someone's hand while holding a pirate's hook in my sleeve (we'd never met before)
• spray water all over the dish pit, ceiling included.  

         [Since we're on the subject, here's a brief life lesson:

    In the battle of human dishwasher vs. ladle, 

there are no winners - only losers.

It looks so harmless.

 

    I'd compare it to running an ultra-marathon naked, 

in Manitoba, 

in February

 or 

to drinking questionable milk]

I've also managed to...

• stay upright in a kayak through most of the Kennebec Gorge (read: most)
• drive a four-wheeler 
• pet a black bear.  It actually felt quite like my cat, only larger and less alive.
• plunge the single-most-foul toilet I've ever encountered.  If I close my eyes, I can still see it.
• shoot archery with a gaggle of sweet Dominican grandmothers.
• start wearing hats.  Thank you to my friend Cathy, state food service laws, and that one retreat guest who left me a fedora.  Her fedora.  On purpose.  I look too much like a little boy to pull it off [without looking like a little boy].
• stop sleeping in.  This seems simultaneously gluttonous and tragic, and yet I will probably attempt to return it to my skill set pronto.
• take one day off in a month.  Though it may sound like I'm flaunting some big accomplishment here, what I'm really saying is that this kind of behavior is particularly unadvisable and likely a result of your own bad planning.  Plan better next time. 
• live in a state of heightened anxiety and panic (see above).
• remain in wedded bliss weddedness.  Considering the previous truth, this is a miracle.  I'd have banished me.  

I keep thinking that I should maintain a list of the unique happenings that that take place here in the woods, and perhaps I really ought to, but as time goes on, the instances themselves become less and less unique and, consequently, more and more everyday.

In conclusion, I suppose I will start on that list...

providing something really weird happens.

Married Life & The Quest To Keep Two Wheels On The Ground

So, I've been reading this book, and the other day I came to a section in which the author was writing about relationships, you know: that messy, haphazard world of dating, love, and lifelong commitment.  I read to the end of a statement about a fellow with a tumultuous dating history and saw that the writer concluded the matter with a sentence like this: "In the end, things have really worked themselves out, and Brian is now happily married".  Is it just me, or does that sound pretty anticlimactic?

Don't get me wrong - I consider myself among the fortunate few who are indeed, married to someone they still like.  I got engaged at the wise old age of 21 years old, married at 22 (barely old enough to make a toast at my own reception), and between now and then we've somehow managed to clear the fences of 6 years.  C and I have gotten this far without dismembering each other or developing a taste for hard drugs, which is what I think the author must have meant when he used the phrase "happily married".

But no, he uses it like most of the world does, as a finishing statement, like, "oh, I'm happily married now, so you might as well bury the coffin". In fact, it's almost as good a conversation ender as "and they lived happily ever after".  If you've read any Disney story EVER, you know what that means:

THE END.

Duh, duh, duuuuh.

But no!  Wait!  Marriage hasn't happened - it's happening!  Some of us entered into our relationships with some seriously misguided expectations, primarily that we would fall into a love that brought us joy and completion - bam! - all of a sudden, like a crashing wave.  But marriage is like the sun: a wildly twisting, dangerously warm, magnetic source of the good, bad, ugly and shockingly hot in life. What happens after your first real disagreement?  The first time you accidentally roll over and elbow your husband in the face at 2 AM?  Reach your first financial goal?  Climb your first mountain together (literally) or canoe your first river?  The first second time you accidentally deck your husband in the face at 2 AM?

This, friends, this marriage thing can be where the adventure begins.  Don't let yourself settle for a marriage that is static, that happened at one point in time.  Swing for the fences!  Do marriage, live marriage, and with a little grace, you will love marriage.

This whole basket hangs on one very important nail, though, and I'm sure you've guessed it.  Marriage is like a bicycle.  If your front wheel is properly inflated, "trued" (aligned), and well... attached, that's a great start.  But if you've got all of this, and your back tire tube is still stored in a Rubbermaid bin somewhere, or worse yet, your whole wheel is a half-mile back on the left, you're in real trouble.  Likewise, marriage is a two-person affair (wait, not literally... or is it?), and you've both got to be in it for the whole ride.  There are times when a wheel can be squeaky, or even bent six ways to Sunday, but if you can address the problem [with the right tools], you can, after some good hard work, find yourself pedaling along the Hudson again (or the Merrimack, or the Kennebec, or the Ohio, or the Fox - you get my drift).

I know that some of your minds are probably hovering on a wrecked marriage (yours, your parents, your child's) with feelings of anger, hurt and frustration.  I'm really sorry - I wish that hadn't happened to your family.  What I'm trying to convey in this post is probably something you realized in the midst of that falling out: that this kind of relationship - this commitment - is active.  It requires movement and effort and sacrifice and laughter.  I don't want anyone else to have to endure the pain of realizing that their marriage has suddenly stopped like a car in an intersection, waiting for the jarring hit from behind.  No one wants to wake up one morning and wonder after so much time, who that person next to them really is.

I've never been sure.

And more than that, don't we want adventure and meaning in our relationships?  I think that marriage, lived actively and purposefully can be exciting.  Unfortunately, I don't have all the answers, and C and I have certainly our run our wheels off the road now and then.  So my only advice is this: Bring along your bike grease, and a whole 'lotta patience, because you're going to need quite a bit of both.

Because the pedaling, though good, isn't always easy.  And sometimes, when the chain gets gummy, I'd much rather get off the bike and walk than face another hill under those conditions.  But even if I get off the bike and push it to the top of the hill, you better believe I'm going to try to clean that chain, because we all know that while you can't get a thrill by walking down the road, going 45 mph down a hill on a trustworthy set of wheels is about the best rush there is.

And every relationship needs a we-flew-off-into-the-ditch kind of story to keep things from getting stale, don't you think?

So saddle up and go get yours.

And It Was A Day That Lived On In Their Hearts And Minds

C and I are on the road today, traveling south for a work meeting plus some quality time with the family dentist, and something monumental just happened.

I looked up to see C pull off of the highway. He explained that he needed to stop and take a leak.

WHAT???

I can't remember the last time that C asked to use a bathroom. He never has to, because I need to pee the same way a mom of eight needs a moment of silence. One learns that you must take every available opportunity, because who knows when you will find yourself stuck on the George Washington Bridge in a van full of children with nary a public bathroom in sight. I once relieved myself in the JFK short-term parking lot, and ever since then I refuse to miss a potty stop (or wooded area).

So, I repeat, this is monumental. And I literally cannot remember the last time this happened. Probably, it never did.

And Now I Pronounce You Husband And Cat-Lady

6 years ago yesterday, I walked barefoot down my childhood front lawn and skittered into place alongside the Adonis that I woke up next to this morning. Scratch that – he woke up at 6am, I woke up at 9:45, so I suppose that should read “that guy that I fell asleep next to last night.”

Marriage is a delicate piece of art, I think: beautifully intricate with sharp edges and complex details, hard to balance, and ultimately… wicked easy to break.  I like to think that I’m still pretty young [at 28], but even now, I have peers at seemingly every stage of the marriage game. 

Some friends are experiencing that intoxicating punch-drunk love of a new relationship, hanging on the every chirp of their lover, and sweeping most contradictions or character flaws under the living room carpet, knowing for sure that “they won’t always be like that”.  While sweet, this makes me giggle and snort a little, because the substance of what C had to deal with years ago… well, let’s just say that they don’t make rugs that big.

Other friends have just tied the knot/sealed the deal/bit the bullet/jumped the broom/taken the plunge.  If you are, or have ever been married, you remember the mixed emotions that live here: you are elated to finally have crossed such a thick line intact, but are repeatedly faced with the reality that your spouse is in one day able to slide into a hot getup for a friend’s wedding in the afternoon, then impress you post-event by farting under the covers all night due to the amount of cocktail hour pot-stickers he/she consumed at the expense of Mrs. Newlywed’s parents.  I like to refer to this stage of marriage as the “shock and awe” segment of the game.  The jury is still out back deliberating punishment for crimes like this.

I have friends and mentors that are nearing (or have reached) the 30 and 40-year marks of their journey, and they have somehow (my parents included) managed not to kill each other, if only by a small margin of error.  Still, these are my heroes.  In that instance when I find every drawer open and the toilet unflushed (again), I wonder how these individuals restrained from putting a few drops of laxative in the next morning’s French roast.  Though when I realize that I’ve begged him to scratch my back/rub my feet/massage my scalp every night for the last 5+ years (and he has obliged, more than 1,800 times), I’m surprised that C hasn’t suffocated me in my sleep and rolled me out the back door, if only because his hands just can’t take it anymore. 

There are others in my life that are going through, or have already endured the indescribable pain and confusion of dissolving their marriages.  When I’ve watched this process or heard their stories, I think of how an amputee must feel after surgery.  Regardless of the disease, the gangrene, the pain of the limb in question, the loss is felt at almost an atomic level.  Something that was, is no longer.  I know that my tears don’t change or mend any part of the wound, but most of the time I can’t help but offer them anyway.  I can only be thankful for what I, at this moment, do have. 

So C, thanks a bunch.  You’ve made this 6-year road trip a good one.  Thanks for hitting all the rest stops (and some of the wooded areas) so that I can pee every half-hour, and for letting us get ice cream to break up the long stretches.  When you’ve felt like leaving me at the Auntie Anne’s Pretzel shop because I’ve asked you to slow down again, or I’ve brought the cat in the car with us, which is always a bad idea, thank you for instead parking us at a scenic overlook so we can each take a short walk in opposite directions and start the next leg of the trip fresh. 

Thank you, I love you.  You make my life a better journey. 

With more snacks.

Road Wars

www.veemoze.files.wordpress.com

I am a road warrior. 

Literally.

C and I have been away from home, traveling from one place to another for the last three weeks, which is not actually unusual for him during this time of year, or for his job.  His co-workers up here do basically the same thing during March and April (aka mud season).  This time is full of marketing events, staff hiring, speaking engagements, meetings, trainings, conferences, and in some years, a form of vacation.   Unfortunately, the latter isn’t true for us this year.  Yet.  

I’ve still got my fingers crossed.

Have you ever gone on a really long road trip with someone?  What I'm thinking of is not the kind of journey that brings you to Las Vegas or Disneyworld, or even to the beach.  It’s just a long ride in the car, like driving to Alaska.  At your best, it’s possible to sustain an adventurous spirit, or even a feeling of solitude while making the drive.  However, do you remember that feeling you get when you’re about half-way into your trip?  This is when the excitement has worn off, and you are ready to either 1) Be at your destination, 2) Turn around and go home, or 3) Stop altogether and go get a milkshake.

At this point, you’re also completely over the person you’re riding with.  Don’t get me wrong – I totally love my husband.  He likes the same music as me (Willie Nelson notwithstanding), lets me snort when I laugh, and does Chewbacca impressions when we’re driving through the city (think palms banging on the roof and short burst of guttural screaming).  He’s generally my favorite guy. 

www.blog.room34.com

Except when we’ve been together for 21 days straight.  Then I'm a monster, and no one is my favorite.  

This is when I every little movement or utterance becomes emotional shrapnel.  If he changes the music, I want to tear his fingernails out.  If I glance at the spedometer [again], he debates driving into the median.  When I gasp at a quick stop, he imagines tying me up and dangling me from a railroad trestle.  Heaven help him if he farts in the car – and this is the truth.  Each and every time until the day we die or lose our licenses, I will have him roll all of the windows down in whatever weather and rue the day he was offered his first French fry.  Snow?  Down it goes.  Hail?   You should have thought of that before you ate that fifth cheeseburger. 

Honestly, it’s amazing that we don’t arrive at our destination with our hair torn out, raspy voices, and some serious relational trauma from the hateful glances we’ve been shooting at each other for hours.  

Oh wait, that last part is true.

Perhaps you’ve made this kind of road trip.  If so, please share some survival tips so that we can live through next spring’s adventure.  The last three weeks have been a little like the circumstances above, but luckily we’re home now.  The sun is shining, it’s a remarkable 39 degrees already this morning, and we’ve each had a little time to ourselves, so we’re back in happy marriage-ville.

That is, until we get back in the car.