Riches

Dear Ranier Maria Rilke-

I re-read your Letters to a Young Poet often. So often, in fact, that I have never shelved the slim volume.  It's been a fixture on my night side table since it was given to me in 2004.  I regret that you and I didn't live here at the same time.  (If we had, I would have pestered you with letters until you wrote one back.)  Instead, I read through your published letters and try to imagine that were addressed to me . . . just like I did last Thursday.

I spent most of Thanksgiving trying not to think about Thanksgiving.  Holidays always make me contemplative, thoughtful, uneasy.  I've been having a particularly rough go of it, and it's hard not to think about all the things I've lost over the past year and a half.  It's tempting to catalog the things I used to be grateful for but no longer enjoy.  But I don't want to be the kind of person that keeps an accounting of every personal grief or slight. 

I cracked open your Letters to a Young Poet. I was looking for a passage that I vaguely recalled but couldn't quite remember.  And there it was staring back at me in black and white:

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.

Touché, Ranier. The truth is that even though this has been a difficult time for me, it has also been a year full of unexpected kindness, generosity, mercy and love. 

Like the moment I unexpectedly saw my dad for the first time in nearly a year.  I'd imagined that if I ever saw him again, I'd punch him in the gut, antagonize him about every lie he'd told, and then kick him in the shins before proclaiming that I hoped he died poor and lonely.  But when I did see him, his head was hung low . . . so low, that he almost walked into me before he saw me.  I was overcome by an entirely different emotion than the rage that had filled me for so many months.  Somewhere, from some unknown place deep inside me, I felt overwhelming empathy for my dad.  Just for a moment.  But in that moment, I found the courage and strength to became a better person that I ever dreamed I was capable of being.  I gave my dad a hug.  There were no apologies. No justifications.  No questions and no denials.  There were no words at all, really. Just a single hug.  In that instant, we weren't two members of a family at odds with one another.  We weren't estranged adults battling out our contradictory version of the truth.  We were just a father and his daughter who suddenly remembered that before the year of hurt and pain and grief and sorrow, there had been decades and decades of love. 

 

There have been many not-so-dramatic, yet just-as-significant experiences like that in the past year. Times I loved, times I felt love.  This is the year I braved multiple tornadoes to rescue my sister from a midterm meltdown. This is the year my friends celebrated my birthday the entire month of August.  This is the year I rescued two little dogs and found them forever homes.  This is the year a friend's four-year old son called out to me as I was leaving the fair, "Miss!  Miss!  I love you!"  This is the year I made it to my little brother's out-of-town high school graduation.  (On a Wednesday afternoon.)  This is the year I received SIX separate Thanksgiving invitations. 

I continue to be reminded of how much I am loved, and of how much I can love.  So, I wanted to set the record straight.  This has been a hard year, but my everyday life is neither a poor nor indifferent place.  Not at all.  By calling forth the riches (and the richness) I have experienced in the past year, I can see that my life is full of grace and warmth and now, gratitude. 

Thank you for helping me out with that, Ranier. 

Sincerely,
SEE

Thanksgiving Break

Dear Family,

I can’t make it to Thanksgiving this year.  I can’t even come up with a reasonable excuse for why . . . I guess I'm supposed to tell you that I have to work this year?  Or maybe I should tell you that I can’t find anyone to keep my dog?  Neither of those things are true.  I don't have to work and I do have a pet sitter; I don’t have any excuses for not coming.  I can’t make it to Thanksgiving because I can’t.  I’m so, so sorry.  I’m not trying to punish anyone or prove a point.  I just don’t have it in me this year. 

The summer before last, Dad made a hasty (and hurtful) exit from our family. For several months, all any of us could talk about was Dad’s new girlfriend, Dad’s credit card bills, Dad’s ridiculous car payment, Dad’s more ridiculous claim for spousal maintenance,  Dad’s unemployment, Dad’s stupidity, Dad’s immorality, Dad’s insanity.  But once the shock wore off and the divorce negotiations were mostly finalized, our thoughts turned to the holidays.  We fretted and plotted and planned and decided that no more holidays should be spent at home.  Ever.  We planned elaborate (and expensive) trips away.  The strategy was to create so many new memories and experiences that no one would notice Dad’s absence.  If we just traveled often enough, maybe we wouldn’t miss our Dad?  Maybe we could even forget that we ever had a dad? 

As crazy as it sounds, it almost worked.  We spent an entire year coordinating plane reservations and rental car options and hotel locations.  There were group trips to Disney World, the State Fair of Texas, New Orleans, SxSW, Park City, Utah, and Montego Bay.  I traveled home at least one weekend a month (sometimes two) for minor events and milestones alike.  I spent countless hours of planning and coordinating the trips, packing and getting ready to leave, making the trip, coming home, unpacking.  After each trip, we’d exchange hundreds of digital pictures and then engage in heated debates about whether we had a single picture that could be used on the family Christmas card to convince everyone we know that we are just fine, thankyouverymuch.  It was like running marathon.  Run far and run fast . . . and don’t stop until you’re so far away that you can’t remember where you started.  And never, ever look back. 

After a year of running full steam ahead, I’m exhausted.  I can’t make another trip right now.  It isn’t the traveling that wears me out—I actually enjoy traveling.  It’s the pretending that’s killing me. Sometimes, we pretend that we never had a dad.  Most of the time, though, we pretend that Dad was the shittiest human being in the world.  (To be fair, Dad really might have been the shittiest husband in the world.)  We pretend it doesn’t bother us when Mom recounts the story of how Dad left her to every flight attendant, rental car agent, and tour guide.  We pretend that Dad’s girlfriend is evil.  We pretend that Mom’s boyfriend is a godsend.  We pretend that our baby brother is doing okay, and we ignore his profound loneliness.  We pretend that one of our parents is incapable of making a good decision.  We pretend that our other parent is incapable of making a bad one.  We pretend not to mind that Mom can’t maintain eye contact or a conversation because she’s working her iPhone like a 15  year-old girl.  We pretend not to notice our our baby brother storming off (and slamming doors) when Mom’s new boyfriend calls.  We pretend that it’s okay that Dad signed away his parental rights.  We pretend it’s okay that Mom paid him for that.  We pretend that we aren’t hurting.  We pretend that we don’t miss our Dad.  We pretend that our family isn’t broken. 

We are broken, each of us in our own way.  And all of that pretending otherwise has left me depleted, exhausted.  I feel like a nub of a human being . . . worn down emotionally to nothing but my base.  I have no more reserves.  I have nothing to give.  And I simply cannot stomach two more days of pretending right now.  So, I’ve decided to stay home for Thanksgiving.  I hope you can forgive me.  Over time, I’ve no doubt that we’ll develop a new sense of family identity.  I’m counting on that.  But this year, I'm going to need to take a break.

Sincerely,

SEE

Lucky.

Dear Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton-

I woke up this morning and realized that today is Election Day.  I needed to vote.  I had to vote.  I had to remember to vote.  So, I do what I always do when its morning and something important needs doing:  I sing.  No, I'm not insane.  Its just that sometimes there are so many things to do that I make up sing-songs to remind myself of the most important tasks.  This memory tool can't possibly be unique to me--I'm sure psychologists and sociologists have studied the matter.  In any case, the point is that today being Election Day, I began singing the tune of one of my favorites songs from one of my favorite childhood movies, Mary Poppins. 

Votes for Women!

Votes for women, step in time,

Votes for women, step in time,

Votes for Women!

I sang that verse all the way to my designated polling location.  While I waited in line to vote, I read the lyrics of the other Mary Poppins songs on my iPhone.  Although "Sister Suffragette" wasn't my favorite song when I was a kid, it might be my favorite today:

We're clearly soldiers in petticoats
And dauntless crusaders for woman's votes
Though we adore men individually
We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!" 

After I submitted my ballot, I walked out of the poll feeling outrageously, blissfully lucky.  Sometimes I forget that voting euphoria, but it happened again today and I remembered that I'd felt this way before.  It's a subtle transition I go through every Election Day.  My stream of consciousness goes something like this:  I need to vote . . . I have to vote . . . Self, don't forget to vote! . . . I'm going to vote . . . I'm voting . . . I GET TO VOTE . . . I'm a lucky girl.  

I am lucky.  As you know, women living in the United States were granted the right to vote in 1920. That means today is only the twenty-fourth time American women have voted for president.  That's not very many presidential elections.  I'm so glad that I live in a time and a place where I have the right to vote.  And today, I'm particularly glad that you lived here too, before me.  I know achieving suffrage for women couldn't have been easy.  I'm sure each of you (and many others) made significant personal sacrifices.  But thank you . . and just in case no one's ever said this to you before, "Well Done Sisters Suffragette!" 

Sincerely,

SEE

Insect Infiltration

Dear Market Pantry-

Someone once told me that its good luck for a ladybug to land on you.  Is it also good luck if you bring home a ladybug in a bag of randomly-selected Market Pantry frozen spinach?  Probably not.

Because if you waited until the last minute to make your spinach dip, which I did, it means Target is closed and you can't go exchange your contaminated spinach.  So, it means you go to another supermarket where you have to buy another bag of frozen spinach.  And this time, you strain it without looking because you are tired and you don't want to know what you might find in this bag of frozen spinach.  While you're focused on not-looking, you realize that you're missing the edge of the sink and dripping spinach water down the cabinet and on to the floor.  You sop up the spinach water with paper towels, and dump the half-strained spinach into the sour-cream-soup-mix dip.  You're tired and trying really hard not to think about the bugs that you probably eat everyday without noticing.  You decide to go to bed and get up early in the morning to clean the kitchen. Which you do.  Except now there's a colony of ants that have moved in.  They thought spinach juice on the floor was an open invitation to bring all their family and friends over.  It wasn't.  So now you spend an hour cleaning up wasted spinach, spinach dip, spinach juice, 10,000 ants, and one frozen ladybug. 

Dad used to remind me that "Some days, you're the bug, and some days, you're the windshield."  But that's really leaving out a whole category of people.  Some days, you're the frozen ladybug.  Some days, you're Market Pantry and you get people to buy contaminated food.  And some days, you're the sorry customer who buys the contaminated food, but is lucky enough to find the frozen insect before serving the spinach dip to co-workers at the annual Halloween luncheon. 

All in all, I'm pretty sure it is bad luck to find a ladybug in your food.  But at least I wasn't the ladybug. There's always that. 

Sincerely,

SEE