Fly to the highest place

This Wednesday I travel back to where I spent the first half of my life.

North Dakota seems like a different country, what with the travel to get there, what with the culture of the people within it. It is a place that once fit my like a glove. How much has that changed, I wonder?

My childhood best friend will pick me up at the airport and we travel from Fargo to Valley City, where a large part of my heart still beats, for so much of who I am is rooted in that small town of 7,000.

Shautay even organized it to where we can go visit the house I grew up in. I realize, it perhaps seems materialistic. But when I stand in the parlor, if it is quiet enough I will close my eyes and see Dad decorating the tree late November while Celtic music plays throughout the house. I can remember evenings spent eating and cleaning together in the kitchen before dishwashers. The bathroom, brushing our teeth in over-sized adult shirts given to us by Aunt Deb after each marathon she ran.

Those foundations of what shaped me.

I want to embrace them again, and being in that house, albeit alone without the rest of my family, can give a tangible remembrance from the past.

We lived it well.

Lyrical tithes

We used to sing "Peace Like a River" in the church I grew up attending. Dressed in skirts, nice pants, and our best shoes and standing in rows altogether with our voices lifted in unison. This part might not be true, but we sang it during the tithing portion of the service, or at least right after. 

"I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river in my soul."

I would stand and read the words projected onto the wall above the alter, dutifully raising my voice alongside Mom, Dad's, and everyone else. It is a thoughtful song, a somewhat slow song that asks you to draw out its notes against the backdrop of a lighthearted piano accompaniment.

Whether you sing in a church or under your breath during work, or while cooking with wine in one hand, the lyrical mantras we express are soothing. Song offers its sense of peace to us whether or not that word is even in the lyrics.

Our mantras. 

This morning the pregnancy test I thought would be positive came back negative, again. It's been six months without succeeding and the deficit I feel stings deeply. 

And so I make myself a cup of coffee and hold it between my hands. The dogs play together. My husbands awakes from his sleep. And I keep reminding myself, "I've got peace like a river."

Because I must. 

The start of a Tuesday

A college professor visited the coffeeshop with his wife yesterday. He ordered a mocha, she a macchiato. I was not sure if it was okay to hug them or not, and so I decided against it. But perhaps they could read my eyes and see it resting there.

Professor Lott told me that one year from now the College of Charleston will offer an MFA program in writing. My heart soars at the idea, but I wonder if it is worth the expense of more student loans. More debt, and for how long?

My father said to me recently, "I have seen you live others' dreams for a long time, Laura. I want to see you pursue your own."

I needn't ask myself what it is that makes my heart glad; it is refining the way I explain to you the experience of interacting with a child, how it feels to pour a latte correctly for a stranger or a friend, details about what it means to travel through this life. It is explaining the human experience in a way that becomes tactile enough that what I present to you from my heart can be easily grasped and if you like, you can carry it, too.

Leeks and leaks

Here. This is the life that was given to you. And now is the only moment you are promised.

To hear these dogs growl and spurn at one another as they nip the air with their teeth and tilted jowls, this is to be me in this moment now. To have watery eyes from cutting leeks with a dull knife, to walk away from the chopping board thankful yet again I did not maim my fingers with my poor slicing habits.

In ninteen days I will board a plane from Charleston to Chicago and onwards to Fargo. It has been four full years since I have been back to visit. It has been fourteen years since my family has gone together to the place where our lives began.

All I am promised is this moment I have before me, a velvet candle lit and effects from an Atlantic hurricane angrily thundering above. Sneezes from those leeks and another surge of thankfulness for use of my fingers.

The more I learn the less I know. But in this most difficult year of loss without recoupe, I've begun to embrace how much more similar than dissimilar are our collective human spirits. Perhaps this is most oft discovered through sharing pain and loss, for our hearts feel deeply and find compassion for each other when met with these stories we share. And once we realize that is so much the same, then we realize the lighter parts of us are not entirely different, either.

At any rate; here. Now.

Thoughts from a foggy sunrise

It's that song from your youth you sing in the shower on a weekend night when you realize you are still alive and can still acheive that thing in this life which makes your heart pound. It is not "too late". It's that inner peace that comes from accepting you have within you the tools to refine the skill. It is capturing the pure energy that arrives with the release of creativity and, every once in awhile, knowing that what you can produce is good. And it is knowing the rest of your life can be a climb toward becoming better, and whether you ever do become better, or best, or just okay at this thing you love, you have spent the commodity of your time well; for your spirit is watered. And your mind is alive. 

This is what it is to pursue that thing in this life that brings your bones and your spirit closer together, and dare I even say, what you were created to pursue.

To have and to hold

I was a mother once. Briefly. Or, at least I carried life within my womb.

And I lost our first baby, so we tried again. And I lost that one, too.

This year brought with it the unsurprising circumstance of my genetic disorder - a rearrangement of cells and chromosomes that disallow the ease of starting a family. Or, at least the odds are less favorable. I prayed for good news when they drew blood for testing back in February, but it is as though I have expected this news my entire life. My heart did not even drop when the counselor told me I was a carrier.

But even so, in December I forged ahead and convinced Matthew that announcing the news to our families before 13 weeks was okay. And when the miscarriage happened, he convinced me to let him tell family and friends. By then I was complacent anyway. We hardly told anyone the second time around.

I have cried both aloud and silently as I try to ride the waves of nausea and guilt. I have hugged my body and heaved, either standing or maybe sitting in the shower with the hope the water could clear away this new reality of knowing more miscarriages are likely to come. How long do you wait to celebrate life while anticipating death?

I've stood at the grave of my hopes.

And I have also emerged from under the clouds. We have tried again. And then again, with no luck. I've spoken the words aloud to friends and heard the story from my own mouth. I have filled my arms at night with our dog. And then the second one we adopted in early Summer. And our beautiful nephew who came in May. And next, another child who I will love dearly. Life moves forward.

By now I have come to expect that life will give us these turns that force an adaptation of our expectations. I suppose I must remember we all experience these things and my hurt is not so unique. This is perhaps the definition of strength; to love the potential fruit of something so much that you look its hinderance in the eye and demand yourself to try, try again.

Pink Tulle

I will dance around you with pointed toes. I will hesitantly observe and outline the shape of what you could be, what I have dreamt you would be since my youth. My heart will plead to step closer. My intellect will impede my feet. You are a ballerina that embodies my own spirit; that flickering wick that casts shadows multitudes times its own size. You are beautiful and in my own most intimate moments I cannot stop staring at you.

You are my dream, the bounty that can be my life here on this earth. You are the ultimate capture of who I was created to be and what I was intended to do. I can feel your pulse in rhythm with mine sometimes and in those minutes I am well. At those times I am more than well, for I am abundant.

Please, do not stop calling to me. Stay lit and alive, my spirit. Fan yourself again the dark walls and light the faces of those who see who you truly are. Shine modestly and confidently.

And self - earthly, malnourished, and improper self - do not stay long away. Forgive your misgivings and step closer. Do not be afraid of the dancer whose feet are your own. Because that beauty you admire is within reach. That rich and satisfying depth is attainable.

Achieve it.