Birds: My Antidepressant

Yesterday morning I had to run out and collect my oldest son from a sleepover at a friend's house so that we could make it to a doctor's appointment. Ordinarily it might be a bit annoying to retrieve someone at eight in the morning, but it was sunny (finally!) and cold and the route to his friend's house is a scenic one. I was feeling really out of sorts, as I have been for a while now, so the drive helped. At one point I was driving on a road beside a creek and when I came around a bend, I saw this group of ducks having a morning swim. The female ducks were the loveliest ducks I've ever seen -- not the usual duck variety, I guess. They were these beautiful shades of brown and tan and creme. I don't know what it is about birds, in particular, that always makes me feel better.

Things have been difficult lately, especially just in my head and in my heart, and my drive made me realize I need to attract some birds to my yard. I wish I understood why they bring me such joy...but I guess I don't really need to understand it to enjoy them. Somehow the opportunity to watch birds fly in and take some seeds and leave gets me out of my own head. At our old house we had a bird feeder on our deck and plenty of tall trees in our yard; winter there was a little more enjoyable than it might otherwise have been because it was a great season for bird watching. The boys loved it. The cats really loved it. We called it Cat TV.

At this house, we don't have a collection of tall trees, though the neighbor has a huge tree right on the property line that drops all its leaves in our yard. Also, we live on a busy street, which doesn't endear us to the birds at all. We have a dog now, who seems to think that birds are flying intruders, and that he, the Protector, must rid our yard of them. Two years ago, when we first moved here, we had a huge gray cat who lived outdoors, and he was quite the hunter. I think the birds innately understood this. The only bird I saw hanging around our backyard, a bold mockingbird, eventually met with an untimely death. I found some feathers by the garage door one day and announced that I thought Gray & White (yes, that's what we called him) had killed the mockingbird. Apparently everyone else already knew this and had tried to hide the evidence from me. To our great sadness, Gray & White disappeared a year ago...

Somehow, birds just make me feel better. Many winters ago, after a terrible miscarriage, it was the bluebirds who brightened my depressed days. And so I think I will take some Christmas money and go buy a bird feeder.

Random Thoughts on Christmas

Well, with Christmas behind me, I'm hoping that I can make a little more time for blogging. I've thought of a lot of things I'd like to write about lately, but the need to wrap presents and visit the grocery store just one more time kept taking precedence. Don't ask me why.

Yesterday morning, I decided it was time for Bear, our dog, to have his Christmas moment. He did get a special bone on Christmas day -- though I thought the bone would last him for hours (thereby keeping him from driving my father, the dog-hater, nuts) and he polished it off in about thirty minutes -- but we did not give him his "real" Christmas present on Christmas day. You simply can't give a retriever a frisbee and then not take him out to play, and that wasn't on our agenda Christmas morning.

Anyway, when I presented the beloved Flippy Flopper frisbee, Bear was overjoyed. Seriously. I could tell. We headed off to the park with Son3 and his new ripstick in tow. The boy practiced on his new toy, and I threw the frisbee for Bear. That dog will fetch anything, but when he chases a frisbee, he flies. He flattens himself out in a dead run with his ears flopping, fully determined to catch the frisbee. If he makes an awesome catch -- one he just barely snags -- he's inclined to take a little extra run with the frisbee, rather than coming back to me immediately. He may even jump in the creek. If he doesn't catch it, or he has to stop and wait for it before the catch, then he comes right back for a new throw. Because he can jump in the creek for a swim or a drink, he could play frisbee for more than an hour. I usually don't last that long. Yesterday he proudly walked home with the frisbee in his mouth. He wagged his tail, which was coated in tiny icicles, the whole way home.

While we were playing frisbee, I heard a lot of shotguns firing. Guess the hunters received some Christmas gifts. Not a very Merry Christmas for the animals... How killing living things qualifies as a "sport," I'll never understand...

Christmas eve day, I was on my way to a bookstore and listening to a bit of Christmas music. One of my favorite Bill Mallonee songs, "Sing Angel Choirs," came on. One of the lines says, "We stumble around through the message each year. Open these eyes, open these ears." That is always my prayer at Christmas time: to see something new, to know God in some new way.

This year I was thinking a lot about the whole "no room at the inn" part of the message. Our field trip to the National Christmas Center had a profound effect on me. The last part of the exhibit is a re-creation of Mary and Joseph's journey, which really got me thinking about Mary and how difficult it must have been to settle down in a stable to give birth after a lengthy journey. In my twenty-first century, first-world mindset, I often think that God should want to make life easier for me. I think I only need to look at Mary to see that that way of thinking is a bit off. She was chosen for something so amazing we can scarcely fathom it, but she suffered much. Just sticking to the Christmas part of the story, she had to live with a scandalous pregnancy and with a reality that people couldn't and wouldn't believe. I wonder if she had her own doubts sometimes. Then she had to make a lengthy journey just as she was about to give birth and then give birth in a stable. If that were me, I'd be thinking that God would definitely provide a room at the inn. Wouldn't you?

But God, as he tends to do, had his own plans. Jesus was born in a stable, and this makes me love God in just a crazy way. That he came as close as he could to all of us in our desperation and included everyone. Surely there's a message in there for the downtrodden, for the homeless, for the outcast, for those estranged from their families...And that message is that God is with us. God with the homeless, the outcast, the powerless, those who feel they're at the mercy of their circumstances. But also God with the wise, those who seek to understand, those who look for him, those who make a pilgrimage to find him. The wise men were surely wealthy, bearing those amazing gifts, and God is with them too. And this year it struck me, God with the animals too. I often think of those verses in Romans 8 that say that all of creation has been subjected to frustration and is in bondage to decay, and all of creation is groaning, waiting for liberation and freedom. Jesus, born in a stable, is surely a message to God's creatures. I am with you too. You are not forgotten. Liberation is on the way.

Riding Lions

The other morning my youngest son came into the kitchen and asked me whether we'd be able to talk to animals in heaven. I, of course, said yes -- not to humor him but because I truly believe that. He was happy with my answer.

Then he told me that when he gets to heaven and sees a lion, he's going to say, "What's up?" and then try to juke out the lion. When the lion catches him, he'll give him a hug, jump on his back for a ride, and then come to find me so I can see him riding a lion. This little bit of news made my heart leap.

I am reaching the end of those years when I am my sons' number-one. It is a marvelous thing -- the adoration a mother receives from her boys. There is nothing like it, but I don't think it lasts forever. Some day, each of my boys will give his heart forever to a girl...and if he should want to show off his lion-riding abilities, it will likely be to her and not to me. That's how it should be, but for now I'm happy to enjoy all the adoration they care to send my way.

Success, of sorts

Well, I've learned a few things in the past several weeks, which is always good. The most important thing is simply this: this story's time has not yet come. Writing habits are one thing, but if your story is still brewing, important ideas still coming, then it may not be quite time to hit the keyboard in earnest. This is not to say that plenty of ideas, even important ones, won't make themselves known once I'm writing lots of pages. I am counting on the fact that they will. But...the ideas that are helping me construct this world, this society, are not all in my head, and until they are it's just putting the cart before the horse.

Just today another piece of this novel presented itself to me. It came as a great surprise while Son2 and I were visiting the National Christmas Museum. (Very cool place BTW.) The idea comes from a German Christmas myth, and it's just what I needed for my story -- but I didn't know that until I stumbled upon it. I love that. Happy little accidents.

I think my quest to write more consistently and my frustration with not doing so has just been a huge trap, making me feel like a failure, when really I'm doing the work. Quite honestly, I've been feeling like I've been letting God down when I haven't been writing. This could sound crazy to some of you, but perhaps not to all of you. Last January (as I surely wrote about somewhere on this blog) I felt like God told me to give this story a little water and a little sunlight each day. And somehow I turned that into write five pages a day, or well, please, at least one. But I haven't been able to do that, and now I see that my frustration is unwarranted. This story needs my attention...but it isn't actually asking to be written yet. I still don't have enough information. And all my attempts at writing page after page have only been increasing my doubts about my own abilities.

So, with all of this nonsense behind me, I'm actually excited about writing this story again. The pressure's off. I'll work on it each day and watch out for happy little accidents. I'm sure I'll know when to start writing in earnest. In the meantime, there's another story I may take a crack at. This one takes place in the real world, so it's a completely different endeavor. And...I think if I can successfully get down to work with this one, it will give me confidence when it comes down to actually writing this fantasy novel.

I have missed writing here and reading your blogs...so I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Making Room

"They" say it takes twenty-one days to make a new habit. For that reason I'm going to take a little break from the blog world and make way for some better habits. Well, maybe just one -- working on this novel. It's not even that I blog that frequently or read others' blogs too obsessively. I was surprised to see that it's been almost a week since I posted something new here because I have a million things I want to write about. They are things I want to share, and they take up space in my brain -- space that right now should be hammering away at these characters and this plot. At the moment I don't have room for it all. And since working and writing and emailing and blogging and reading blogs and buying Christmas gifts and reading the news obsessively all take place on my computer, everything starts to run together into a jumbled mess. So I'm making way for more creative writing by temporarily avoiding blogging and blogs and my compulsive reading of the New York Times online.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, "they" say, and I'm feeling desperate. The new year is about seven weeks away and I don't want to get to January 1 without making some kind of progress on this book. I want to find some momentum sometime soon. Please. Oh please. I'm also feeling a tad, shall we say...convicted. And that rather uncomfortable feeling settled in for a visit after I read someone else's blog. That someone else is a writer (so different from me because he actually writes!) and on his blog he was reflecting on something he had written, noting that if he hadn't put time into writing it then it wouldn't exist. The gist was to consider what you're NOT doing. Your creative works won't be birthed without you, and the world could be missing out on something great and important.

This is not to say that what I am trying to write will be great or important. That's not the point. It's just that I'm the only one who can write this story.

And so we'll see if I can make some new and better writing habits in the next three weeks. Hopefully my next visit to this page will have some good news -- a post about success rather than failure. For the next three weeks I will miss writing the occasional blog post and I will miss reading your blogs, but I'll be back.

For now, I must depart. I hear an argument brewing in the house. One brother just said to another: "There are no words to express how annoying you are." This does not sound like the recipe for a smooth bedtime.

Failure

It is amazing to me, when I stop and reflect on it, the degree to which feelings of failure dog me as an adult and as a mother. These feelings are my constant companion. I don’t know why my fall-back position is to see what I am doing wrong rather than what I’m doing right. I don’t know why I can’t just cut myself a bit of slack. Yet at just the thought of that, I think, why should I?

There are a lot of reasons for this, but one contributing factor is – my children! They are not only articulate but they’re quite open with their thoughts and feelings. Honestly, sometimes I think I’d prefer it if they were a little less honest. Kept a few thoughts to themselves.

This is perhaps not the best example, but this morning, Son2 said, “When are we going to start doing other classes for homeschooling? Isn’t the whole point to try new things? To broaden your horizons?” And that’s a direct quote. I heard this and I felt like a bomb went off inside of me, all this frustration with my own shortcomings. And so what’s a mother to do except get defensive? And I say something like, “Just because I haven’t found any classes for you doesn’t mean I haven’t been looking. I’ve tried really hard. I have a lot to juggle, and I’m doing my best.” I also said, “Yes, that is one of the reasons for homeschooling, and it can be a benefit, but our main purpose was to make things less stressful for you because of your migraines.” Just to make it clear that I wasn’t a TOTAL FAILURE. Ugh.

For me, the opportunity to feel like I’m failing lurks around every corner. I wonder if other women feel this way. Here are just a few more glorious examples:

My friend comes to pick up her son who’s been playing here for the afternoon. She brings homemade cookies for us. I think, I suck. I never bake.

I hear about people who are doing creative things. I nearly despise myself. I am not writing. I’ve pretty much trashed my manuscript. I’m rethinking the characters, confused about the point of view. I think, I will never be able to do this. I don’t know how to write this way. And, I can’t even find the time. I can’t even get dinner made half the time. Who am I kidding?

Another day goes by in which I don’t make phone calls that need to be made – doctor appointments that need to be scheduled, the appliance repair man to come and fix our leaking refrigerator, the fencing club (yes, really) about fencing lessons for my dissatisfied homeschooler. And yes, another day has gone by.

Son2 says, “We used to do fun things on Saturdays. Now we never do.” Great. You’ll have no happy memories. Is there any point in explaining the ins and outs of this? The activities. The exhaustion. The need to occasionally clean the house and keep things from falling apart. And is it really never? I know it isn't, but still I feel that frustration with myself exploding. It's so easy to believe I'm letting my kids down.

Why is it so hard for me to focus on what I do well? On what I actually do accomplish? I really have no idea.

***
On an entirely different note, I was watching the news yesterday morning and I saw a commercial for the Broadway Across America tour of A Chorus Line, which will be coming to the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore. We don’t have our tickets yet, but I’m super excited!

A Lazy Post

I'm experiencing blogger's guilt for whatever reason. It's only been two days, hardly enough to feel guilty about, but that's how I am. My husband likes to remind me that I would have made a wonderful Catholic. Undoubtedly.

But my mind is feeling dull, perhaps some strange side effect of not being overwhelmed by work. Who knows. So my lazy post is a poem that I wrote forever ago. I thought of it the other day when the yellow leaves on the tree that overshadows the front of our house made a golden glow of sunlight in our living room. Not that the poem is about our living room. That could be strange. But it is about fall.

BTW, I don't love the ending. It feels a bit abrupt, which I think I recently said about one of my other poems. Guess I need to work on that!

Woods Walk

I smelled death that day
the sweetness of rotting layers
of leaves becoming dirt
all that was once green
fallen
growing richer still

and smoke too
the fragrant offering of Autumn
filling our nostrils
with the passage to dormancy

I heard our feet crunching
stirring up the layers
your legs kicking up joy
laughter punctuating the silence
of that canopied sanctuary

I saw the eerie illumination
sunlight filtering through orange and red
three small bodies
glowing with me
in the smoky silence

feast for the senses
this walk in our gullied woods
sacred communion deepened
by the flash of a bounding stag
we tracked his footprints
headed for home