Perfection

 I teach at a high school where perfectionism is an epidemic, and kids crumble when they do not reach their own (or their families') impossibly high standards. I do not envy these kids: too many of them have lost their joy; too many of them have forgotten (at such a young age!) why it's wonderful to be living.

I think of one of my jobs as a teacher as showing them what it's like to have a meaningful life, modeling to them what it means to live in integrity with one's self, and how to seek joy at every turn. Part of this is doing things imperfectly, and forgiving one's self even as one balances accepting faults and trying to improve them. I let the kids know how imperfect my life is - cancer, divorce, yada yada yada - and how joyful it is anyway.

Today is a joyful day.

I woke up to the "Besties" thread already lighting up my phone; Carolyn and Susan were texting before I was even awake, sharing the details of their lives with each other and with me. That's perfection: people who care about me, and who are brave in speaking their joys and sorrows. We chatted for a while in the early morning as I made and drank my coffee, and then we all went to our tasks knowing that the others were there if we needed them.

Because it's a day off, I went to the park and the beach. My imperfect life means that I missed a step in the dark and did something unpleasant to my knee on Saturday and I've been trying to baby it since then, but I felt up to a gentle walk today. I meandered the beach, taking in the incredible autumn light, the sound of the gentle waves on the pebbles, the calls of shorebirds and crows. A seal popped up and we held eye contact. The grandmother trees in the park stood sentry, the ferries came and went, the light snow on the mountains in the distance promised more to come. The leaves are no longer brilliant red and gold, and some of the trees are bare, but some trees still have soft ambers and browns, the gentle side of autumn, and the firs and the cedars contribute their rich forest colors.

The seal popped up nearby, and I made my way over the logs to get closer to her. As I got to the water's edge, I found a tire filled with Styrofoam - obviously a buoy lost its moorings - about six feet out. I found a long stick (almost a small log) and used it to pull the tire in, then rolled it across the beach, path, and grass to the nearest rubbish bin, and I felt like a small hero for saving the nasty Styrofoam from further degrading into the beautiful Sound, and for finding ways to fish it out of the water.

Three crows witnessed me, and I heard them speaking to one another in a language I rarely hear: purrs and gurgles in a song that was quite beautiful and soft, nothing harsh at all, and I was overcome with the beauty of the light on their feathers and the moment.

I ran errands, came home and raked the leaves from the driveway by the garage (I've been meaning to do that for a week!), showered and changed into an outfit that I love, and then made bread dough (which is now rising). I sat and journaled in my favorite cozy chair, and then I made tea and sat here to talk to you. I'll work on my book next, and then I'll meet a friend at the coffee shop. When she leaves I'll stay at the coffee shop a while longer, grading. (I've decided that my writing studio is NOT for work. The two will be kept separate!)

Tonight I'll make a big pot of vegetable soup to go with my bread, and I'll cut into my pomegranate to put the jeweled fruit into a spinach salad, and I'll curl up in my favorite PJs to read a book for a while.

This is a short work week because of Veteran's Day (thank you, Veterans!), and then there's only a week until the next short week and Thanksgiving. My work life balance feels manageable, despite the stack of grading.

This weekend I'm vising Alex in Pullman, and picking up Tessa in Ellensburg to join me. To have these young people in my life to spoil a bit is such a gift in my life, and I'm looking forward to a mini-adventure. Tessa will stay on Alex's couch so that they can go out in the evenings and I can go to bed at what I consider a reasonable time, and we'll eat good food and find things to entertain ourselves.

Speaking of good food: I have been sugar free since November 1st, and I'm so proud of myself. My body feels much better, and I'm glad I finally summoned my willpower to make this happen, because I deserve to feel good.

I did a spell involving a blue candle, incense, and crystals (labradorite for transformation, citrine for success, amethyst and quartz for clarity and higher self, fluorite for focus) invoking change for myself, and the change I asked for is for consistency in my writing practice. "The first thing the magic changes is you" and this is true for me: the intentionality of lighting the incense and candle daily (for five days), burning a piece of paper with my intentions written on it, and then sitting down to write does somehow feel magical. Is it the lovely scent of the incense, the fire of the candle, and the metaphysical properties of the stones... or is it all my intentionality in creating a small beautiful ritual that makes it feel easier to follow through on my dreams?

It doesn't really matter, does it? Because I'm here, and peaceful, and hopeful, and filled with ideas for my book. The main characters are named Margaret and Maya, and I hear them whispering in my dreams that they want to tell their story.

The calendar is filled with fun events, and with chores, in balance. I'm so grateful for the beautiful weather today that made me linger on the shore and take a million pictures on my old iPhone, spamming my friends with "isn't it just so beautiful here?" and "look at this pretty seashell I found!" (today it was a chiton, freshly eaten by some other creature, the inside beautiful bright turquoise and smelly). I'll have to face those papers this afternoon, and tomorrow my exercise will by necessity take place in the week hours of the morning in my basement, not in the sunshine along the edge of the forest and the sea, but that's okay too. I'll put on an audiobook and use my treadmill, and then I'll hit my yoga mat for a bit and I'll go to work in the dark feeling proud of myself. There is joy in that, too: in knowing that I'm doing my best, and that while I am not in the best shape at the moment I'm doing what I need to do to make my life the best I can.

Yesterday I saw orcas at Lowman Beach for the second time in a week, and my heart still leaps to think of it. Wordsworth felt it for "a rainbow in the sky" and I do like a good rainbow, but I swear it's got nothing on watching a wild whale swim by. I have good whale energy, and I see them often... is it because I'm lucky with whales, or because I'm always looking for them? Or isn't it the same thing?

I feel like the luckiest woman in the world lately, despite any evidence (there's plenty if you look) to the contrary. I know what bad days look like, having experienced a fair number of them (ha!), but this isn't it. This is pure magic, and I intend to honor it.

Perfect? I don't know what that is, and I think if we could define it, then perfection would shift and the definition would no longer serve. I'm not interested in perfection, which sounds absolutely exhausting to me (how could exhaustion be perfect?). 

But this? This is magic and love and gratitude and good will and hope and peace, to sit here on this five (six?) year old computer, in my pretty little basement office (that I've decided to call a studio, because it sounds so much more creative!), the sky soft blue and little birds fluttering by outside, candles flickering inside. I'm drinking tea that was a gift from Tessa, and it's got dried raspberry and lemon along with green rooibos, and I love it; it's even better in the mug from Orcas Island Pottery, with soft music in the background in a room full of plants and books and candles and light.

This is a beautiful life, even without breasts and ovaries, even without a family of origin or a husband holding me up.... or maybe especially because of that, because I know what pain feels like, and I can appreciate this gentle joy so much more because of that. 

"These are the good ol' days" sings Carly Simon, and Van Morrison told me there'd be "days like this." Khalid reminds me that "nothing feels better than this." Feelings come and go, and some days really stink, and I'll have those days again because life's like that. But in the mean time, I'm living in gratitude for days when perfection really doesn't seem that far away, and in deep gratitude that my mind will allow me to see it for the wonder that it really is.

The only thing that could make it better is fulfilling my promise to Maya and Margaret to tell their stories today, so please excuse me while I go meet them in the corners of my mind and bring them to life.

I hope that today you, too, are touched with magic and joy and hope, and that you're having a great day. But if today is on the other side of that equation, as sometimes life is, I hope that you remember that days like this await you, and that when you get there it will feel all the sweeter because you know the taste of sorrow.

Until next time, dear readers. Thanks for coming on this journey with me.

One month and two days

 If things go according to plan, Tessa will graduate college in just over a month.

I stand here in wonder and awe at her luminance, the magic of this moment in her life and in mine.

For her, this is something that nobody can ever take away form her. It belongs to her and her alone, and she gets to hold it forever. It is proof of what she can do, of her tenacity and resilience, her intelligence, her fortitude. She never liked school - I think she enjoys some of her classes, but homework was never anything but painful - but she saw it through, and I'm so proud of her that I'm bursting.

"Sit in salt water, light a candle for my daughter..." sings Florence + The Machine as I typed that last bit. Florence is singing of the pain of her miscarriage, and the "You Can Have it All" title is bitter.

But I wonder if  - miracle of miracles - in the end, I get to have it all. Of course, not ALL-all, but somehow, still, all.

I lost things along the way, "like salt in a weakened broth" says the poet Naomi Shihab Nye in "Kindness":

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

Oh, yes, I lost things. I lost my breasts, then my womb and ovaries, my femininity stripped from me and placed under a microscope, quivering in stainless steel dishes, cold and exposed. Then I lost my marriage - or did I ever really have it? - in what, at the end, felt like a purifying fire, the heat filling me where the surgeries had left me iced.

And then I lost those years of career, never to be regained. I lost financial footing, clawing at the shale slope and longing to find something solid like basalt or soft like a forest floor, looking down and fearing that I'd fall off the cliff face.

Sure that I was done - don't bad things come in threes? - I lost again, this time my family of origin, ugly words revealing what had been the truth for too long, shame flooding my body. Thank goodness for years of lifeguarding, so that I could swim with all my might to rescue myself, finding shore and gasping at the sea of shame that threatened to take away everything I knew about myself, shaking in the grief that I do not get a family the way I thought I would.

But every time I lost, I found again.

22 (nearly 23) years since I held my baby and knew for sure that this is what pure love looked like.

20 years since cancer, and I'm alive to see Tessa step into her womanhood in this new way.

12 years since divorce, which I feared would kill me in a new way, but was actually proof that I was a  phoenix, that I could rise and fly in ways I'd forgotten possible; years of showing Tessa how to live.

9 years since losing my family of origin, father first, then everyone else: mother, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins. One cousin did let me know that my grandmother had died but then had to call back, embarrassed to report that I was not welcome at the funeral. Years of teaching Tessa boundaries, and learning to parent myself as well as her as I sorted through the detritus of my upbringing and vowed not to gift her with its waste.

8 years since I returned to teaching, finding my way again in my career, using my education. Years of modeling passion and purpose to my daughter.

4 years since Tessa decided to go to college, and found her way in. Difficult years for her, but such a time of proving to herself something that she needed to know in her bones. And four years of remaking myself, with her living in an apartment on her own time a couple of hours away.

And now? Now, she launches. I have given her the best of myself, even when that wasn't enough, I think it's fair to say that I gave it my all, and that my commitment to giving it all to my beloved daughter until I draw my last breath is a thousandfold what it was that first time I saw her face, cradled her body, and vowed that there is nothing I would not do to protect her and give her a good life.

So she must launch, and I will too.

I am filled with a new energy lately, finding my footing more than ever, and I'm so hopeful that this next phase will be a time of kindness, of stepping into light and love.

When I first got divorced, I stood on the edge of Lowman Beach, and had the sudden clear vision that when I saw orcas swim by that beach, it would be a sign that I was ready for the next phase of my life, ready for love, and that love would find me. Since then I have run to the beach every time the orcas were nearby, and I have seen them many times since (it's one of my gifts!), but never from Lowman. I could spot them at Alki, or Constellation, or from a boat in the Sound, or from Emma Schmitz, or from a ferry or an island... but never from Lowman. Disappointed, I decided that maybe it would never happen, determined not to want it, but searching the horizon of the sea despite myself.

Last week I saw them from the shore, a crowd of us gasping in delight - "Did you see it? In line with the point, by the research boat! Oh, look, another one!" The man next to me loaned me his binoculars and I saw a fin so large I was sure it was taller than I am. And my heart beat faster - was it really a sign?

And then today I went to the beach again, wrapped in a blanket against the cold, looking for wishing stones and painting a little seascape in my portable art set (I remind myself that it was the process, not the outcome, that I was seeking, because I have no idea what I'm doing but it's fun anyway!). And then... was that a splash? Oh! And another! And running to the water line, talking to another woman, delighting in, yes! A third! Oh look at them, by Colman pool, how are we so lucky to live her, and now the sun is setting (so early in the afternoon!) and I can't believe it and oh I love orcas.

Twice in a week. Grateful to the tips of my toes, sure now that it's a sign (sometimes I'm slow, and I appreciated the confirmation!).

In one month and two days, my daughter's life changes forever, and she grasps what was hers to claim, her birthright. On her mother's side, she is the second woman to receive a college degree. I am the first, and it was hard for me (how DID I work 70 hours a week sometimes?!) and it has been my joy to make it easier on her.

And now we both launch into new things. She is all dewy skin and flat stomach and breasts that belong to her body and independence and dreams and determination and integrity and pure stubbornness and the deepest kindness. She has hopes, but she has fears too, and she will have to reinvent herself in this phase. She is ready, of that I have no doubt. She has wings; she will fly.

And I am launching too. Did the orcas bring love? Time will tell! But my writing is back on track, and that feels good. I'm exercising in the mornings. I gave up sugar for the month (exceptions for Thanksgiving!) and I'm on day 10 without it. Work is going well. I go to the beach on my day off, and I make Christmas presents for friends, and I go to live concerts, and I read stories and light candles and read tarot. I have friends who are good and true, and I have friends who are actually sisters. I have big dreams for myself, and peace about watching Tessa fly.

I never seem to do things on just the right schedule - I couldn't write this in two days to have a clean "just one month from now" because I'm not that tidy. I'm messy and on my own schedule, not right or wrong but mine, just the same as my daughter.

We have made it, she and I. We are well. It's messy, and sometimes it's scary, but it is also so jaw-droppingly beautiful. As she creates herself anew, I create myself anew, and I am inspired by her, and hope that I can return the favor.

I saw orcas, and I must mark the occasion. My daughter and I are well.

All will be well.

(And just to be clear, I think "mystic" is witch. Yes. And I loved her ever since learning the UU song by Meg Barnhouse, and I love her even more because of Florence's references.)

And speaking of Florence's lyrics....

I got to hold my daughter in my arms, and she did not die. And then I did not die, and I get to see her become a woman, to sprout wings bigger than mine, to surpass me in so many ways. And I get to playfully say, "you can't pass me yet - watch this!" and flap my own broken wings harder, to fly higher, because I have mended them over and over and I can still fly.

The crows don't get out of the way when I walk by anymore; I tell them how beautiful they are, and they strut near my feet, our eyes meeting. Their black glossy wings remind me that I can fly - and that I still have some magic tricks up my sleeves, because I am not done reinventing myself either.

One month and two days from now, she grabs the ring. It's my ring too, and how glad I am to share a copy of my own. Let her come into her power, and let me explore mine.

All shall be well.