Author Archives: Kristin Tennant

Baby Season

Posted on by under Season & Place

I dreamed last night that I had a brand-new baby girl.

The dream wasn’t all snuggles and coos—it definitely included some bizarre elements, as dreams do. I was, for instance, somehow surprised by the arrival of this baby, even though it seemed clear in the dream that I had given birth to her, not adopted or found her wrapped in blankets in a cardboard box on my doorstep. My level of surprise about the baby was palpable in the dream, but I knew enough to hide my astonishment from others. I calmly went along caring for her and showing her off to friends as if I, too, had been expecting her all along.

Because I wasn’t actually expecting this baby, Dream Me had to improvise a bit to get her properly clothed and geared up. A significant scene in the dream involved me pulling big plastic bins off a top shelf in an enormous closet to look through the clothes my two real-life daughters wore as newborns.

One such bin exists in a (much smaller) closet in my waking life. It’s filled with the tiny shoes, Easter dresses, and footed pajamas deemed Most Special, along with handmade gifts like the pale blue cardigan my grandmother knitted for my firstborn, with its kitty-cat buttons and row of silhouetted white cats along the border. But in real life, I haven’t looked through that bin for probably a decade—not since that moment when I somehow knew my baby days were over, prompting me to sort all the little clothes into two piles: items to pass along to friends having babies, and favorite treasures to carefully pack away and keep.

When I woke from the dream, I was filled with longing, love, and loss. This might not seem at all surprising to most people, but it completely surprised me. I have never been a woman who longs for babies.

Of course, an entire season of my life was devoted to babies. It’s a season I treasure and wouldn’t trade for the world, but mostly because it is a necessary season for all who want to have children who will some day not be babies. The Baby Season was simply the first stage of parenting—the inevitable season leading to all of the seasons that follow.

*   *   *   *   *

Every parent, if they’re being honest, will admit to having favorite (and least favorite) seasons of parenting. Yet somehow I’ve always felt guilty for not being baby-crazy. It’s almost as if not getting the “uterus aches” that other women talk about when they see newborns knocks your womanhood status down several notches and calls your maternal instincts into question.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved my own babies fiercely. (For those of us who are not “baby people,” our own babies defy that category). But I don’t remember thinking “I never want them to grow up!” I loved the experience of nursing my babies (and I did nurse them each for about 13 months—does that earn me extra credit?), but I don’t recall a heart-rending pull as my babies began to rely less on my milk, eventually weaning without a fuss.

Instead, I was happy to see them grow into unique little personalities, with opinions and relationships and senses of humor. I loved watching them develop friendships and put feelings into words as toddlers, then problem-solve, create, and become more independent as they ventured through their preschool years.

During my daughters’ elementary school years, I was forever fascinated by the glimpses of myself and other family members I saw in my girls, and was equally fascinated by the many facets of them that seemed to crystalize out of nowhere. And the ways my two children are different from each other—two girls created from the very same gene pool!—has never ceased throughout the years to be amazing, refreshing, and challenging all at once.

*   *   *   *   *

Today my daughters are 17 and 14, both in high school. There’s no doubt I’m in a different season of parenting. Along the way I’ve loved many of the stages—six and 18 months were ages I savored, along with their preschool and mid-elementary years—but I have to say the particular season we’re in is one of my favorites. It’s also possibly the hardest (teenage girls!). And it has occurred to me several times that those two opposing feelings—the love and joy as well as the stress and challenges—are in fact intimately bound together. Everything is intense, on both ends of the spectrum. Preparing girls to go into the world as women, sure of who they are and what they are capable of, is no small task. It’s both exciting and difficult, like all of the best adventures.

And as I consider last night’s dream, I’m also realizing how very bittersweet this season is—much more so than I want (or have the time and emotional space) to admit in the day to day. It’s more bittersweet than weaning my babies, or packing their tiny shoes away into plastic bins.

Yes, as parents we’ve been preparing our daughters for independence all along, but these are the years when it gets real—not only in how their experiences and our conversations will prepare them for what’s next, but also in the ways “what’s next” will impact me. I can begin to envision a time when our household won’t strain at the seams to contain the whirlwind of kinetic energy that exists between 6:45 and 7:45 each morning; when the pile of shoes by the front door will diminish in number as well as colorful variety; and when the dishwasher won’t be packed full after a single family dinner with everyone at the table.

photoIt’s true, I’ve never wished my daughters could remain captured in a state of babyhood. But they are still my babies. No matter how grownup they become, they’ll still embody all of the love and longing of the seasons we’ve been through. And as we rush through these final years of childhood, the baby in my dreams reminds me that it’s OK to pause—to long to bundle them into footed jammies and enfold in my arms.

 

On the threshold

Posted on by under Season & Place

I was born on the threshold of spring—at that moment when winter could just as easily dig in her heels as bow graciously and take her leave.

Over the years, the second day of March has skipped, tip-toed, sloshed, or trudged onto the scene of my life, accompanied by a wide variety of backdrops. Some years, the snow completely melts by then, inviting me to joyfully lace up new sneakers in place of clunky boots, and to take my coffee out to the porch.

I remember one spring-like childhood birthday in particular, because it was nice enough outside to go for a spin on my new birthday bike—a yellow banana seat Huffy with orange and white accents, called “Texas Rose” (bikes came with names back then, written in a suitable font across the chain guard). I still remember the clichéd-but-very-real freedom I felt as I pushed hard on the pedals to pick up speed, the wind lifting my bangs off my forehead and the handlebar streamers blowing back, tickling my arms. Even the puddles, spraying a mist of grimey specks onto my pants, were a joy to whiz through: The sound of bike tires cutting through puddles was the music of spring. Back in our driveway I engaged the kickstand, my Michigan winter legs trembling in response to the sudden demand placed on spring-and-summer muscles.

photo (8)Other years (like this year, for instance), heaps of snow have cruelly set my birthday scene. By early March everyone, of course, is longing for spring, but I tend to take its coy absence personally. I would gladly exchange all my birthday presents for an early departure of winter—for a walk on non-treacherous sidewalks in the sunshine, hat- and mitten-free, with the first signs of daffodils poking up through dead leaves. What could be a better gift than a promise that temperatures won’t fall below 50 again until fall?

unnamed-2Instead, the likely reality in early March is something in between—neither here nor there, winter nor spring. In March you can often find me walking on the north side of the street, where the longer days of south-sweeping sunshine have melted the snow into slushy puddles and coaxed snowdrops, aconites, and crocuses out of hiding.

Soggy grass and brave flowers on one side of the street, dirty piles of snow and icy sidewalks on the other; I walk through March balanced in an awareness of what has been and what is to come.

*   *   *   *   *

As if taking a cue from the month of my birth, I tend to live my life at the intersection of realism and optimism—with an acute awareness of what is, but also a vivid understanding of what could be. The truth of the matter, as well as the hope. The now and the not yet. The lion and the lamb.

I grudgingly see the dirty piles of snow for what they are, but I know they’ll eventually become water to nourish flowers and lush green grass. The messy pile of boots by my front door, and the puddles and salt deposits they leave on the wood floor, will undoubtedly be replaced by sneakers and flip-flops, grass clippings and leaves.

unnamed-3And the weight I feel—whether from so many layers of clothing and gear, or from built-up deposits of worries and regrets—will melt away, just as surely as the clouds will disperse and warmer streams of air will travel my direction, crowding out the chill. Suddenly, one bright morning, I will be able to see again who I am under all those layers of down and wool, and wondering and longing. I will see that I am a new creation, in process, again and again.

15 minutes as a corpse

Posted on by under Role & Place

It’s only 1 pm and already the day has been long and full. I can feel myself bracing against it, a response that is, at once, both offensive and defensive—meant to conquer and to protect.

My instinct is to keep pushing against and through the day, but instead I take a cue from my dog. Locating the patch of sun on the living room rug, I lie down flat on my back, in what is known in yoga as shavasana, the corpse pose.

Not only is the term shavasana somewhat new to me, as I’ve just recently committed myself to a yoga practice after a few years of only taking a class here and there, but the entire concept is foreign. Being a good corpse can be tricky for the living—especially, it seems, for me. The idea of being awake but not doing anything, other than holding an awareness of the rise and fall of my abdomen with each breath, does not come naturally.

But I try, nonetheless. The trick is to try without trying too hard, which has a way of defeating the purpose. All I can say is thank goodness for eye pillows. Without one, my eyes would never close, or even cease their darting behind my closed lids. If there was such a thing as a body-sized eye pillow, I would gladly let its gentle weight hold me down.

sunonrugInstead, I wiggle a bit, to introduce my body to the rug—to the idea that, for now, it isn’t responsible for holding me upright.

Next, I release my tongue from the roof of my mouth, where it always seems poised, ready for the next word.

I let my hands grow heavy and limp, imagining them putting roots into the floor rather than tapping over the keyboard, matching a pile of clean socks, or comforting a child.

I notice that my shoulders, always curving into the tension of my work and life, are the last part of me to give in to this crazy thing I’m doing here in the middle of my work day: lying in a patch of sun on the rug, like my dog. I mentally coax each shoulder down toward the rug below, then down and back even further. They have so far to go, so much to relearn.

Finally, I am aware only (mostly) of the sun warming my chest as it rises and falls.

*   *   *   *   *

I am a doer. That sounds like a brag—like I’m touting a true American character asset. In many ways, it is an asset. Being a doer is certainly not something you’d hide in a job interview.

But as one who is always compelled to do the doing, I’m not so sure.

“I’m sensing a very deep-seeded, emotional holding pattern,” my massage therapist said last week, after several sessions of intense work meant to release the muscle mass reaching across my shoulders and up my neck. The massage work, he told me, has accomplished what it should in terms of releasing the individual muscles, but something in my being is refusing to let go.

I left his office feeling discouraged that my massage therapist couldn’t just do something to make me better, but also recognizing the irony of that. I wanted him to do so that I could keep doing—an unsustainable cycle of short-term fixes.

*   *   *   *   *

Doing is satisfying. It makes me feel useful and necessary.

Doing enables me, at the end of the day, to look back at the previous 12-or-so hours and quantify their worth. It makes me feel like I’ve somehow earned that glass of wine with dinner, a TV show before bed, and a good night’s sleep. I need it, after all—tomorrow brings another day of doing.

There is, of course, a cultural construct built around the idea of being busy and productive, but I can mostly let go of that. Busyness isn’t something I feel proud of, a “humble brag” I would share on Facebook. For me, it’s the energy I get from doing that I’m addicted to. I love generating ideas, collaborating with others, and making good things happen. I love seeing where there are holes in the world around me and then figuring out how to fill them, so that places and communities and lives are better.

Being engaged through doing also gives me a satisfying sense ownership, whether in my writing business, my church, or my daughters’ school. And yes, I’m sure there’s a bit of a control-freak factor mixed in there, and probably some fear of failure (who am I kidding?). There’s a good chance that’s part of what my massage therapist was sensing in my body.

Either way, it’s no joke. I need to do something about it. (Ha! There it is again. Do. I can’t help myself.) Although in truth, I’m beginning to realize there’s not much I can do about this, other than learn to be. Earlier this year, as many bloggers I know were choosing their #oneword for 2015, I began to see the name of this very blog, You Are Here, in a new way: not just as a way to think about place, but as a way to think about being—being present where I am.

Maybe my word for 2015 should simply be “Here.” I am here. In this place. In this moment. In this body. I am here whether I’m doing something or, as our culture likes to call it, doing “nothing.”

*   *   *   *   *

In the case of lying corpse-like on my living room floor in the middle of the work day, the “doer me” would love to say I’m doing shavasana. But I’m learning to shift how I think. For now, I’m not doing, I’m simply being.

Gradually, I feel the sun creeping onto my right shoulder, rewarding it for accomplishing its most difficult task: letting go. Turning my face toward the sun, I let the eye pillow slide to the floor, keeping my eyes closed so they can begin adjusting to the light through my lids.

When I finally open my eyes, they take in the slant of sun through the living room window—the sun I have felt and can now see. My eyes observe how the dust in the air and the silver thread of a spider’s web connected to the window’s sill give the sun more dimension. I take one more deep breath before pushing myself up off the rug, and I think, No, I don’t need to dust. Maybe eventually, but for now I will just notice.

I am Mama, hear me roar

Posted on by under Role & Place

I’ll never forget my very first Mama Roar—how it erupted spontaneously from deep within me (my loins, perhaps?) before I even had a moment to process and filter what emerged.

My firstborn, Q, who was just barely one, was on her maiden voyage at the mall play area. The fantastical space was breakfast-themed: populated with a huge fried egg (complete with a fun bouncy yolk), a banana to slide down, and a wavy piece of bacon to navigate. Q and I had sat and watched the kids there several times before, but that February day, after almost two months of practicing her walking skills, she was ready to join the fun.

I watched from a bench along the perimeter as Q bravely toddled into the fray of darting and screeching preschoolers. The term “helicopter parent” hadn’t yet been coined, but I had already determined I wouldn’t be one. If Q needed my reassurance or help, I would be close by. As I watched her bravely move farther away from me, her diaper-bum adorably donned in navy-and-lime-striped leggings, I mentally congratulated myself, randomly taking credit (as new parents do) for the fearlessness of my little girl.

Suddenly, BAM! A burly (at least relative to Q) preschooler ran by, deliberately shoving Q flat on her face. I jumped up, my heart pounding, then saw that Q was stunned, but not crying. She stood up, looking around her to gain her bearings, then started again to toddle toward her original destination: an enormous waffle topped with a pillow-sized pat of butter. I took a deep breath, commending myself for my restraint, before noticing that same boy was making another round through the oversized breakfast fare.

BAM! Down Q went again. And Mama Bear leapt into action. In a bound I was at Q’s side, picking her up in a protective hug. Then, as the boy sped back in our direction I reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him in mid-flight.

“YOU. Need. To. SLOW. DOWN.” I uttered as he squirmed against my grip. “There are very small children here—you’re going to hurt someone!”

Where is this boy’s parent? I wondered as I released my grip, looking around to see the mom or dad who would be surely walking toward us to offer an apology. What I saw instead was a woman who couldn’t bother to stand up, calling to me, “Is there a problem?” When I walked over to tell her that her son had deliberately knocked down my toddler twice, she laughed, saying, “Boys will be boys.”

“Only if you let them,” I seethed, turning away to buckle a stunned Q into her stroller and roll her back to the safety of our den.

 *   *   *   *   *

Indignation was no stranger to me. Even as a kid, I had an aptitude for speaking my mind, especially when faced with an injustice of some sort (whether real or conflated by my teenage brain). In high school, I was famous for pointing out to teachers why a “wrong” test answer was technically also right, and why those of us who had been marked down should get credit. More often than not, voicing my logic paid off. When my brother left for college, and I suddenly was called on to do the dishes every evening rather than every other evening, I argued it wasn’t my fault that I was born second and had no younger sibling to share the work with. (In this case, my argument fell flat.)

4765579640_89fc950de4_zBut even acting on a full range of indignation over the years did not prepare me for becoming a Mama Bear. Those pre-parent experiences had been merely exercises in logic and persuasion—hypothetical practice for the debate team I was never on. This—this was different. It was not a cunning game. It was the waking of a beast that had been hibernating within me, feeding on the hormones released by pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. By the time Q and I visited the play area at the mall that winter day, the beast was well-rested and fattened, ready to bare her teeth.

As my two daughters have grown, I’ve become accustomed to my Mama Bear sidekick; sadly, we’ve had plenty of experiences that have called for her services. But knowing how and when to tame her has been an ever-changing challenge that shifts with each setting and stage my daughters go through. When do they really need me to intervene—to demonstrate the importance and art of standing up for beliefs and rights, and especially for others? And when do they need to learn about disappointment and the “life-isn’t-fair” state of the world? When should they be left to decide for themselves if an injustice is real or perceived? When do I need to advocate—ideally with much grace—and when should I demonstrate how to retreat with grace?

Because Mama Bear isn’t necessarily rational. She doesn’t always see the big picture. What Mama Bear does see, with laser vision, is the child. She sees the child for who she is—both the strengths and weaknesses, the abundance of potential that’s inevitably tinged with fear of how the world might respond. And the Mama Bear loves the child so much that she can’t help but ache for that child’s best. It’s a love that emerges from her very being, coursing through every vein and seeping from every pore.

In fact, if you could infuse that Mama-Bear-love with a whole lot of grace and a much longer view, it just might be a taste of the love God has for his children. With that in mind, I’ve decided to start thinking of the Serenity Prayer as the Mama Bear prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
(Grrrrrr…I mean, Amen.)

 *   *   *   *   *

(The Mama Bear and cub photo used above is by xinem.)

Hunting

Posted on by under Home & Place

We were armed, of course—with a very rational checklist, like all house-hunters are.

It looked something like this:

– Four bedrooms (we have three daughters and lots of house guests)

– At least two full bathrooms, including one of the main floor (did I mention three daughters?)

– A spacious kitchen with lots of counter space (Jason and I usually cook together—there’s often a daughter and a dog in the mix, too)

– A dedicated space for me to work (I work from home, which had always meant carving out a cramped corner of the living room)

– Closets! (Closets, closets, closets! Our current house had not a single closet or pantry on the entire first floor—and did I mention three daughters? And backpacks, soccer shin guards, volleyballs, a cello, and more pairs of shoes, boots, and muddy cleats than I could count?)

– A hang-out space of some sort (as our daughters grew into teenagers, we wanted to be sure they regularly invited friends)

– A fireplace (for those cozy, picturesque evenings together as a family)

– A front porch (I have always considered this a must for a house)

– A location in our current neighborhood (walking distance to the girls’ schools, cafes, the library, the farmers’ market, etc.)

Oh, and there was one must-not-have: NO black walnut tree. We’d had enough of the squirrel colony that congregated in the backyard of our current house, and enough of the curses we uttered each time our current tree dropped its ample harvest on our roof, cars, and patio furniture.

In general, we thought our checklist was perfectly reasonable. And we weren’t in a huge hurry to find something—we had already survived two years as a newly-formed family of five in the house I had purchased for three (as a single mom, just months before I met Jason). We were just “keeping our eyes out.”

Each year, for about three years, we went to see a handful of houses. Some met the requirements on our checklist, but were just too expensive. Others had a significant flaw (or two)—a visible bulging in the foundation; a tiny, unworkable living room (but lots of space everywhere else); terrible kitchens (without any hope for feasible remodel plans); a shared driveway or no garage.

There were also a couple of houses that could have worked, but were somehow just “off.” I began to differentiate “house-hunting,” which requires being armed with a list and a realtor, from “home-hunting,” which calls for a fully-loaded gut (and a refusal to buy into the optimism gushing from the realtor’s mouth).

With each visit to a new listing, the hope that buoyed us as the realtor unlocked the front door, quickly deflated. And with each disappointment, we returned to our cozy home determined to find ways to make it work. Trips to IKEA resulted in more storage, and a remodel of the basement added a second bathroom and a fourth bedroom, so two of our girls no longer had to share. After three years of “keeping an eye out” for houses, we simply stopped.

house4saleAnd then, one February day in 2013, I was walking the dog and saw a new For Sale sign. Even from the sidewalk, something about the house spoke to me—to my gut, as cheesy as that sounds.

As it turns out, it was The One—even though it didn’t meet all of the requirements on our ever-so-rational checklist. There were two full bathrooms, but no bathroom of any sort of the first floor (this is apparently a cost of loving 100-year-old houses). There was a beautiful sunroom with built-in bookshelves and three walls of windows, which has become my dream office, but no front porch. The kitchen was workable, but not nearly as spacious as we had hoped for during our house hunting. And there was a wood-burning fireplace, as advertised in the listing, but during the inspection we discovered that it wasn’t a working fireplace and couldn’t actually be fixed to become one, short of completely rebuilding the chimney.

homecomingdinner2013Yes, there are four bedrooms and plenty of beautiful closets, and the location is perfect. Even more importantly, much of what we envisioned for our new home has become a reality—less clutter, more space for family and friends to be together, the ability to host big meals (that first fall we did a Homecoming dinner for our daughter and 22 of her friends and a chili cook-off for 50+). And as a family, we’ve enjoyed two cozy winters of together time, gathered by the fire—the people we bought the house from installed a gas fireplace (not our original ideal, but it sure has made it easy to light a fire every evening rather than just every-so-often).

In short, this is our home and it has been just right from the beginning, regardless what our list said. Even that first summer, when we realized that big tree in the backyard was—you guessed it—a black walnut (this is a danger of buying a house in February and not being an expert in tree bark identification), we had to laugh as we grumbled. After all, we had been home-hunting, not house-hunting.

 

The stories of things

Posted on by under Home & Place

One winter Monday, 15 or so years ago, I arrived at work to some devastating news: Over the weekend, a coworker had lost her home to a fire.

We all huddled around the coffee pot in the break room, trying to imagine—although we knew we couldn’t—what it would be like to lose almost all of your earthly possessions. A week later, when our colleague Chris returned to work, we began the slow process of bearing witness to her shock and grief. Then, months later, we were her empathic-yet-fascinated audience as she told stories of the new house rising from the ashes—not just being built, but also being populated with new things.

I was only in my late-20s and had accumulated relatively little, yet I couldn’t fathom what it would mean to start completely over. There would be the lack of pillowcases, cake pans, and familiar sweaters waiting for you as fall settles into winter, but also many harder-to-replace things: No rows of books with penciled notes and cardstock bookmarks identifying the shops where the books were bought. No wedding gifts that, each time you use them, bring to mind the great aunt or college friend who bestowed them. No outdated lamps from your childhood, handed down to you as you entered adulthood with so little.

Chris was in her late 50s, so the home she lost had contained decades of memories and treasures. While her new home was being built, Chris told us about the interior decorator, who specialized in “recreating meaning.” I was utterly fascinated by—and skeptical of—the process, which involved interviewing Chris and her husband to gather meaningful family stories and tales of travel adventures—references she would then bring into the new home through new objects.

I never would have dared to ask Chris, but I always wondered: Did it work? Can a home speak in retrospect of a life lived, or must the life be lived into the home?

*   *   *   *   *

I suppose the question needled me because it touched on an area I had dabbled in myself—but in reverse: I, as a newly married 22 year old, had attempted to use objects in my home to speak into my story. I didn’t know what my life would be like, but I knew what I wanted it to look like. If I built the stage, would the life follow?

Garage sales, thrift shops, and odd pieces of loaned and handed-down furniture created the kind of comfortable, quirky, space-with-a-history that I longed for. My husband was a painter, so the walls were filled with art (indicating that we were “creative” and “interesting,” of course!). A set of handmade pottery dishes, given to us as wedding gifts, conveyed that we were “down-to-earth” and “simple”—no fine china for us! And we rushed to buy books to fill the shelves—more books than we could possibly keep up with. It would take us years to actually read and absorb their stories and ideas, but that wasn’t the point. I wanted to be instantly surrounded by these visual symbols of intellect and depth.

In short, I wanted everything in my home to tell a story about us, but I was too impatient to let the stories emerge on their own.

*   *   *   *   *

Now I know the answer to the question I wanted to ask Chris so many years ago: A life must be lived into the things that fill a home—it can’t be put on, like a costume.

My home today (the eighth of my adulthood homes) is filled with evidence of a life that’s been both beautiful and complex. Yes, the books, art, furniture, and dishes each have stories to tell, but they are not all happy stories. They tell stories of a broken marriage as well as stories of wholeness and healing. They bring to mind the struggles and triumphs of single motherhood, as well as the ongoing tales of blending two families into a new one.

My eyes scan the rooms visible from where I sit at my desk. There’s the dining room table—the same table my ex-husband and I sat at four homes ago, a highchair pulled up so we could spoon food into our daughter’s mouth. Now, during dinners at that table, Jason and I navigate the tumble of tales and ideas shared by our three teenage daughters.

photo 1I can also see the vintage sofa I happily snatched up as a single mom about to move into a rented duplex. It’s the same sofa I sat on to read books to my young daughters, but it has since been reupholstered (following an unspeakable incident with the family dog). Behind the sofa is the piano I grew up hearing my grandmother play; she gave it to me when it was time for her to move into assisted living, and time for my daughters to learn to read music.

And beyond the sofa and piano, just inside the front door, is a gallery wall of small artwork and treasures. An olive-wood cross, carved and painted in Santorini where Jason and I honeymooned, hangs just to the left of a painting my ex-husband made of the house he and I lived in when our daughters were born.

photo (7)Suddenly, I can see my home for what it is: not a collection of aesthetic choices I hope will communicate something appealing about me, but vessels holding the real stories that have emerged in my life. And that gallery wall in particular? It also symbolizes my acceptance of those stories—the intentional, beautiful stories as well as the haphazard and heartbreaking ones. Together, they speak truth: Welcome to my home, welcome to my life.

 

 

Out of Place in Yourself

Posted on by under Out of Place

At the time, I had no way to describe it other than, “I just don’t feel like myself.”

Feeling out of place in my own skin was new to me. I was the person who seemed comfortable almost everywhere—the one who struck up conversations with grocery store cashiers while they scanned my purchases and with other parents as we watched our children play at the park. I didn’t get nervous at job interviews or speaking in front of a group.

The world was a fairly comfortable place. I had somehow lucked into the type of personality that “fits” best in the world, a circumstance that then snowballs in the best possible way: My general comfort allowed me the luxury of assuming the best of others and believing I also had something good to share with them.

But then, that vague out-of-placeness began lingering. It was like a dark cloud just over my shoulder, gradually seeping then settling deep into my bones. At first I was able to override it, when I needed to, but eventually it took root as a feeling of insecurity—a sense that I was no longer comfortable with myself, or with others.

Rather than seeing strangers as potential friends, and seeing friends as people who were looking out for my best interest, I began seeing them all as possible agents of hurt, as people not to be trusted with my fragile being.

I also saw myself as having little to share with others. Where I had once felt powerful in my ability to enrich and brighten people’s lives, I suddenly felt sure I would do the opposite. So I did something I had never done before—I turned inward.

*   *   *   *   *

IllinoisfieldUnfortunately, this turn in me coincided with a move I did not want to make, to a place I did not want to live. My then-husband had accepted a job in the middle of Illinois, so we moved our two daughters (one still in diapers, the other a busy preschooler) away from the wooded lakeshores of West Michigan to the flat cornfields of Illinois.

But it wasn’t the landscape that left me feeling foreign—it was being surrounded by people who only knew this out-of-place version of me. My history, my core, the way I had been just a year or two before—they were all unknown to the people around me, which made those parts of who I was feel even less real. When reality is shifting, one of the only comforts is being able to look into the face of someone who sees and recognizes it too—someone who can say, “I know. You are not crazy.”

It would be months before someone knew me enough to ask—and I trusted her enough to listen—“Do you think you’re struggling with depression?”

Now, looking back at that time, I find it hard to believe that I could have been so oblivious to something so obvious. But in most cases, depression sneaks in so gradually that you don’t recognize it, and then it changes you so profoundly that, before you know it, you don’t recognize yourself. It’s disorienting in the most fundamental way. Even your own sense of who you were—who you are at your core—is distorted and suspect.

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Thankfully, anti-depressants have been effective for me, especially paired with a whole lot of self-reflection and a determination to uncover and embrace my truest self (which in many ways I had never done, even back in those pre-depression days when my skin and the world I moved through felt so comfortable).

Now I have a decade’s worth of perspective on that time in my life, and I’m able to see this: If depression is one of the darkest of clouds a human being can try to live beneath, my experience with it has a silver lining. Not only has it allowed me to develop great compassion for others who feel out of place—whether that sense is rooted in depression or in a too-narrow set of societal expectations and norms—but it has also revealed to me what love looks and feels like: a deep desire for wholeness in another. God’s love for me is rooted in his desire for me to live fully as my true self, the person he created me to be. And likewise, that is how I am called to love others, from my husband and teenage daughters to the people in my community who rub me the wrong way: To love them is to long for them to be at home in their skin.

Between here and there

Posted on by under Out of Place

Going home, for me, involves many of the cozy things you might expect—fires in the fireplace, my mom’s apple pie, snow falling outside the windows while we play board games late into the night. But for the past decade, being at my parents’ house in Michigan has also involved hours spent in a place where I feel least at home: Among the dying.

Yes, we’re all in the process of dying—we walk every day among the living and dying. But death feels so much more palpable and impossible to ignore in the nursing home where my grandmother lives. Grandma turned 100 in May, and is no longer strong enough to make it out of her button-controlled bed into a wheelchair and then into a car for the 15-mile trip to my parents’ house. All of our visiting with her now happens at the nursing home, where nothing smells right, sounds right, or feels at peace.

Last week we visited her on Thanksgiving, a piece of pie in hand to sweeten her day with a taste of home. Grandma was sitting in bed asleep, a spoon still in her hand and dots of bright, abstract chili splatters marking her “bib.” She still feeds herself (mostly, if she can stay awake), she still exercises, pedaling a bike-like device with her hands, and her mind is usually surprisingly sharp.nursinghomeroom

Still, Grandma is 100. It took us a while to wake her up enough to see a spark of recognition in her faded blue eyes, as my dad gently removed the spoon from her hand, dabbing at a bit of chili on her chin with a napkin dipped in her water glass.

As we chatted, we raised our voices to an unnatural level, allowing us to be heard above the TV on the other side of the curtain. At this volume, we were loud enough to attract the attention of Grandma’s roommate Leta, who is tireless in her attempts to get in on our conversation. Leta has Alzheimer’s, and while we hate being rude, engaging her is like opening Pandora’s box: There is no end, which only makes Grandma grouchy. We are her family, and she wants our full attention. We want to give it to her, too. Each time we end a visit, as I kiss Grandma’s cheek goodbye and smile into her eyes, I am forced to inwardly acknowledge this might be our last visit.

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I have never gotten comfortable with the idea of death. Of course, I have plenty of company in that place of discomfort, especially here in America. But even though my aversion to death is common, I’ve still always felt a certain amount of guilt about feeling this way.

The guilt, I suspect, mostly stems from being raised in the church, where there was a sense that, as Christians, we were supposed to “long for heaven”—that heaven was our true home, and God was our true father, and anyone who wasn’t praying for Jesus to return and whisk us all away (somewhere up in the sky with gold-paved streets) was probably not a true Christian.

While death is something I avert my eyes from, aging, so far, has been a good thing. I like being wiser and knowing better who I am with each year—feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin as time passes. I was surprised by how easily I embraced turning 40. It was a celebration of making it through so much and finding myself on the other side more whole and happy than I had ever been. But I assume there is a tipping point, a moment when growing older ceases to be an unfolding and begins to fold back in on itself—a realization that my body doesn’t work like it used to be, and that chronic pain has the power to eclipse joy.

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For now, though, my family is young and we carry that joy around in us, like a bright light that emits warmth for others to bask in. Taking that joy to my grandmother’s nursing home may not be fun or comfortable, but it is our responsibility, even as we long to shrink away from the sights, smells, and sounds of the old and dying.

carolingpicIt has become our tradition when we’re in Michigan for Christmas to sing carols up and down the halls of the nursing home, pushing Grandma in her wheelchair at the front of the parade, where she feels like queen for a day. When she was young—even well into her 70s—Grandma’s trained voice was a beautiful soprano, and she played the piano like a dream. Now, when her family is surrounding her, making music in four-part harmony, Grandma is as close to heaven as she will get on this earth.

We pause and sing for a while to a group of people sitting in the lobby just outside the dining hall. As we finish singing and turn to go, wishing them a Merry Christmas, several of the residents reach out to touch our hands—especially the hands of our three teenage daughters, so young and soft they seem to radiate goodness powerful enough to be contagious. Others seem to have forgotten us, lost in reverie. Their eyes are misty with tears, focused on a faraway spot that takes them beyond the nursing home, beyond place and time. Here, we are all out of place in our own ways, suspended somewhere between young and old, life and death, the now and the not yet.

Cut from the same dough

Posted on by under Food & Place

When I was growing up, they were simply “Christmas cookies” to me—not butter cookies or cutout cookies. Just Christmas cookies: the quintessential sweet of the season.

Of course, there were many cookie varieties on the platter my mom kept stocked on the kitchen counter throughout the holiday season. I had to taste each of the others at some point—the gingerbread, the mini pecan pie shells, the coconut and chocolate “magic bars,” and the shortbread squares with salty cashews pressed into the caramel on top. But when the platter was offered with the instruction to “just take one,” my small hands only hovered over other choices before inevitably gravitating back to a beloved “Christmas cookie.”

cookietinAs an adult, I consider these classics a family recipe, but in truth, the five-ingredient list is hardly complicated, or a secret: butter, flour, sugar, an egg, and—most importantly—a half-teaspoon of real almond extract (imitation is forbidden!). First, as with all cookies, the butter and sugar are creamed together before adding the egg and almond extract. Then the flour is carefully stirred in. For years I had to hand over the spoon to my mom when the last cup of flour went into the bowl, and for years I was in awe of how strong she was, as I watched her effortlessly finish the job my wimpy arm couldn’t handle.

scookiecutterAfter the dough was chilled (a step I was never a fan of waiting through), my mom and I rolled it out to a careful ¼-inch thick round ready to be puzzled into Christmas shapes. It was with Christmas cookie dough that I learned to use a rolling pin: gently but firmly, keeping the pressure even between left and right hands, learning to lift the rolling pin slightly as it reached the outer perimeter of the dough, so as not to leave the edges too thin to be cut.

Opening up the tin of cookie cutters each December was as thrilling to me as unearthing my family’s boxes of tree decorations. All the old favorite shapes were there—stocking, tree, candy cane, wreath, star, santa, and the gingerbread boy and girl (which we didn’t hesitate to use on non-gingerbread dough)—as well as the surprise of a new cookie cutter or two we had added to the collection the year before. I learned to be strategic about arranging each shape before pressing it into the dough, minimizing the scraps of dough to be gathered and rolled out again. The outstretched leg of the reindeer nicely made use of a little strip of available dough left along the top of a tree’s point, and the positive points of one star could utilize the negative spaces left by another star.

Frosting and decorating the cookies, though, was the best part of the process. The bowls of colored frosting and various sprinkles were laid out on the table, drawing the whole family as if they were a feast rather than work to be shared. Over the years, our approach became increasingly elaborate and creative. Armed with toothpicks, we discovered techniques for swirling two or more colors of frosting in the middle of a star, and for picking up and placing tiny candy balls exactly where we wanted them, along the hem of an angel’s dress. In his teens, my brother went rogue with his approach, transforming traditional shapes into entirely different objects—an upside-down stocking became a hobby-horse, and bell became a space shuttle, with USA spelled out carefully using those small, stick-shaped chocolate sprinkles.

As a college student, making and decorating “Christmas cookies” was always my first order of business upon arriving home after finals. Years later, after having my own children, I could hardly wait for them to be old enough to sit around the kitchen table and decorate cookies with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Bill. When I eventually met Jason, I knew immediately he and his daughter would embrace the slightly-competitive fun of our family’s cookie decorating marathons. (A man who would scoff at such an activity would be no man for me!)

Our three daughters are now teenagers, and the “Christmas cookie” tradition continues—even beyond Christmas. Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that “Christmas cookies” could be made at other times of the year, so I began buying new cookie cutters: tulips and rabbits, pumpkins and maple leaves, hearts and snowflakes.

photo (2)A few weeks ago, on a cold Saturday morning, we sat down around the dinning room table, where stacks of naked autumn cookies waited for their sweet, creative disguises. Each of the girls had invited a friend to join us. “I didn’t realize other people even did this any more,” one of our guests said, picking up a toothpick and getting intricate with her design.

The cookies are definitely special—everyone who sees them and bites into one agrees. But for me, it’s the tradition of time spent together—evolving as our family evolves, yet remaining the same from year to year, in a life where it seems nothing really remains the same—that I crave most this time of year.

What’s possible around a table

Posted on by under Food & Place

My husband Jason is a true amateur chef—at least if you understand amateur as a French word derived from amare: to love. He cooks because he loves to, and he cooks for the purpose of showing love to others.

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One of my first significant encounters with Jason’s cooking took place at a birthday dinner he prepared for a friend—a friend who happened to be (and still is) his ex-wife’s partner.

At the time, the birthday dinner plans didn’t strike me as unusual. Jason and I had been dating for about a month, and I knew he was close to his ex and her partner. I had also heard (but hadn’t yet fully experienced) that Jason was a great cook. Why wouldn’t he offer to make the celebration dinner?

That evening, we all chatted as friends arrived, pouring glasses of wine, helping to set the table, and keeping an eye on one-another’s children as amazing scents wafted from the kitchen where Jason was working his magic.

It wasn’t until we sat down around the table to give thanks for the food and for our friend on her birthday that the beautiful peculiarity of the event struck me—with enough weight to trigger a physiological response: goose bumps on my arms and a tingle of emotion rising up behind my eyes.

My boyfriend just prepared a dinner to celebrate his ex-wife’s partner, I thought, with amazement.

The sentence rolled through my mind like a ticker tape all evening, taking on slightly new meanings and more weight each time. My own life had gone through its share of rough waters the past few years, deadening what had once been an optimistic expectation that there was goodness in the world. That birthday dinner made me believe in the possibility of redemption. It suddenly felt like anything that seemed impossible to the world was, in fact, possible. Especially around a table.

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chefjacketAs our relationship developed over the months, Jason continued to surprise me with his capacity for rendering not just delicious flavors, but also soul-feeding grace. I soon realized that for him, the food and the emotional substance go hand in hand.

My first Christmas with Jason’s family (just days after we got engaged) was my introduction to his extended family and their collective love for food. Jason’s aunt is African American, and in her kitchen, Jason and his cousins combined all they had learned from Aunt Gina and all they had taught themselves, creating a truly fusion Christmas dinner. The traditions of the older generations blended with the new, as recipes from the African-American South were served up next to recreated dishes that had recently been tasted in Chicago’s hippest restaurants.

In our own home after we married, “What’s for dinner?” became our young daughters’ most eagerly-posed question. Their very favorite answer was one that rose unmistakably from the kitchen to their noses—roasted cumin, peppercorns, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon being ground together for Jason’s Tikka Masala. I loved watching our daughters’ tastes and appreciation for delicious and new foods develop. I also loved the subtle yet powerful ways our two families first got to know one another and then blended and bonded over conversations around the table. Dinners that take time and care to create, it seems, demand meal times that mirror that time and care.

Jason’s cooking skills also make our home a favorite destination for friends—those who love to eat as well as those who love to cook. As our circle of food-loving friends began to grow, Jason and I decided to host an annual chili and cornbread cook-off. The event has evolved and grown over the years (eight and counting!), but the heart of the event has stayed the same: It’s an opportunity for us to bring together friends from all parts of our lives—friends we know from church and friends from the local music scene, foodie friends and work friends, family from Chicago and friends we know through our daughters’ schools. The event lets us gather the often-disparate parts of our lives—each with their own cooking styles and secret family recipes—and create a single whole, a representation of who we are and who we love.

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I won’t lie—when it comes to Jason’s cooking, the food alone is an amazing thing. But it’s the spaces those meals create that I love most.

Those of us who grew up in the church tend to see The Table as a powerful metaphor, but that doesn’t mean we can always see or articulate how that metaphor plays out in our Monday-through-Saturday lives. I saw it clearly for the first time at that birthday dinner Jason cooked so many years ago. And once I recognized it for what it is, I started to see it everywhere: in the words our now-teenage daughters share with us over dinner, in the collaborative bustle in Aunt Gina’s kitchen, in the beauty of diverse friends gathered together for a co-created meal in our home. It begins to seem that some level of powerful grace and forgiveness—of authenticity and wholeness—is always possible when people sit down together for a meal.

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