WORLD SHAPING
Near the
end of the chapter “Solace,”in David Whyte’s book
CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of
Everyday Words,
solace asks three
very direct and forceful questions.
1.
How will you bear the inevitable that is coming to you?
2.
How will you endure it through the years ?
3.
How will you shape a world equal to and as beautiful
and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light, and
then just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away?
These
questions stopped me in my tracks. And
as I so often do when that happens, I picked up my journal and started
writing. I’m still puzzling and writing
and musing over my answers. These past
two years have opened me to the inevitable that I, like so many others, try to
avoid thinking about and dealing with.
I’ve gone through many pages writing of various stages of dealing with
questions one and two. Answers have
varied from burying my head in the sand, to kicking and screaming “No, No, No,” to drifting peacefully into the
dark night.
Question
three got my attention and put the responsibility on me. “How will I shape my world equal to and as
beautiful and as astonishing…?”
I sit back,
relax and stare out my window. My living room at street level, is like a tree
house. My condo is built into a
hill. The maple is in full summer
greenery and leaves dance gracefully. A
cardinal flies past the window and settles momentarily on a branch. Robins twitter and flit back and forth. Several black crows fly toward the house,
swoop upward out of sight. The dove coos
softly from its nest near the condo. The
sky is blue. Cirrus and cumulus clouds
float lazily. I follow them and find
myself in a field of tall grass.
Small
children are running. Exuberant, joyful,
their shouts of laughter bring smiles to the moms watching from the backyard or
the kitchen window. I am one of the
children. My exhilaration grows with a
sense of freedom as I frolic and flop in the tall grass. Flattening the grass in patterns, we create the
rooms where our bodies can rest as we catch our breath— momentarily. Then up we jump and off we run—our excited
laughter ringing out on the warm waves of summer.
It’s my
first day of kindergarten and I’m walking with my daddy and Mr. Hyduke, his
friend, to my school which is next door to the high school where they
teach. Dressed in my finest new school
clothes, I’m excited to meet my teacher, new friends and go to school. My motor mouth asks a zillion questions as we
walk and my short legs try to match strides with daddy and “Mike” (I could
never call him that out loud.) I flash
to other days when daddy rode me to and from kindergarten on the handlebars of
his bicycle.
My favorite
memory floats by: I’m “doing tricks”
with my daddy, standing steady on his hands as he lies on the ground then stands
up slowly and carefully raises me high to the sky where I stand proudly, hands
on my hips, smiling at whoever is around to watch.
Mommy, her
friend, Hazel and I are walking across a cow pasture. “Be careful, Susan. Don’t step on the cow pies. Watch where you step.”
I laugh,
“Uck, I’ll be careful.”
We climb
over the stile to the other side of the fence and continue our walk into the
woods. I skip along happily and stop to
examine a purple flower. Mommy names it
for me and tells me a bit about it. I
love to walk with Mommy and Hazel, listening to their easy conversation. Mommy knows everything about the trees, wild
flowers, sky and clouds, and she shows me the difference between fir, pine and
spruce needles. She shows me and has me
feel the different kinds of bark on the tree trunks. We walk to the edge of the “South Campus” as
we called it. Gustavus Adolphus College
was three miles east. This is the property of the Insane Asylum, as it was
known in that day. There we turn around
for our walk back to town. I skip
ahead. My exuberance slows into a slow,
shuffling. “I’m tired.”
“We’re
almost back to Hazel’s,” mommy says quietly.
See here’s the stile. Energy returns
for a moment, as I climb quickly, jump off the top step, and amble slowly
across the cow pasture watching for cow pies.
Yuck!
I flashed
to years later. I returned to GA college
from the town where we had moved to after my kindergarten year. I spent Tuesdays at the then State Hospital
visiting patients on the closed ward for the insane. On Sundays, I sometimes went back to play
ping pong and pool with inmates who were non-psychotic. I wanted to be a psychiatric nurse at that
time. I enjoyed the company of the
mostly young men (I don’t remember any girls).
It was where I learned to play pool—though not very well. Ping pong was my game, though I seldom
won. It was there I learned that we are
not so different from “the other”, and that they had much to give me, including
friendship.
Mommy,
daddy, sister, Carol, and I are out for a Sunday drive in our new old car. We’ve finally gotten rid of our rotten egg
blue ’37 Ford that had to be cranked to start.
It’s a sunny warm fall day and we are driving east out in the
country. Moorhead is very flat,
primarily farmland with few trees. We’ve
driven into a hillier, more woodsy area.
The trees are brilliant in their fall colors and I watch with
wonder. As our car reaches the top of a
small curving hill, my breath catches.
Down below us is the awesome artistry of a hillside rich with oranges,
pinks, reds, greens such as I’d never seen before glowing in the late afternoon
sun. I’m startled and a bit embarrassed
to find tears flow down my cheeks. My
first memory of spontaneous tears of and beauty coming up from my heart.
Other
memories, float in front of me of joyous times, simple times, family times,
lasting friendships, singing around a campfire in the arms of love. My first child—and the second, third, and
fourth. My first grandchild—the second,
third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth—all special and one of a kind. I see my grandchildren standing in front of me holding out
my Christmas present, excitedly urging me and squirming for position as they
waited for me to open it. Overwhelmed,
tears streamed down my face. “Don’t’ you
like it?” they chorused.
“I love it
more than I can say. I cry when I’m
happy and I couldn’t be happier now. I
love it and I love you,” I sniffled and smiled as I looked at each page of the
calendar; their pictures and memories gracing each month’s page.
The last, a
powerful memory of the day I
snowshoed on the beach of Lake Huron. In the silent beauty my heart was split wide open, but that’s a
story for another time and place.
This is the
simple and astonishing world that birthed me and brought me into the light of pure
joy and awe. And this is the simple and
astonishing world that just as I am beginning to appreciate and understand it,
can take me away. Starting today, and for
the time I have left, how do I shape a world as simple and astonishing as the
world that birthed me?
It won’t be
the same as the world that birthed me, but with the things I’ve learned in my
lifetime, the sorrows I’ve lived through and healed from, the fears I’ve
overcome, the joys and blessings I’ve discovered and recovered I believe it is
possible. I’ve learned that it’s the
little things that bring me joy. I
missed a lot of joy and beauty before I learned to watch for it. I’m learning to notice the small things that
really are the most astonishing.
