Pussywillows

Today, a moving truck will come and take with it all the things that have rested in my childhood home for twenty-four years. The first place I learned to read, to ride a bike — lost my first tooth, had my first kiss.

I wrote a goodbye note to my childhood home. Out of all the things that happened there, I found myself dwelling on whatever bloomed in the yard. I realized that I was quite affected by the bright pink Prairifire Crabapple tree blooms in spring, the bold Hydrangea bundles in late summer, the red pops of the Burning Bushes out front when the first signs of autumn came, and that same Crabapple tree donned in maroon-colored berry-like drupes as the yard began to freeze with winter.

All that life, and just the flora to speak of. All those days, and when I sat to reflect, visions of blossoms and leaves sat at the forefront of my mind. 

I think, maybe, I like to cling to visuals (especially beautiful ones) to mark the seasons, the eras. I suppose I’ll chalk it up to my propensity for the sentimental. Or more honestly, my obsession with the passage of time. To put it most bluntly, my fear of death.

Ah, the lesson that plagues me so – looks me dead in the face, reminding me that I’d better get used to the idea sooner or later, and ideally before the Great Clock takes me, or worse, my beloved. Illustrated well in my biweekly therapy sessions, every last discussed topic dipped in a coat of time scarcity and sprinkled with a fear of loss. The same theme was reflected back to me once again when I sent my childhood friend a photo of the for-sale sign in the front yard and her response, “Damn the wheel of time, why must you continuously roll over?”

…

Today, I sit in the sunroom of an apartment I’ve lived in for six months – the first place I’ve lived with a significant other, had a pet, hosted a dinner party, paid a 401K bill. 

I take care of myself here, as well as my partner. He takes care of himself, as well as me – right here in this home we share, the first home we’ve made together. We feed our kitten here, I sleep with her wrapped against my neck like a scarf, already fearing the day I’ll have to say goodbye to the soft little creature who has so quickly taught me so much – the first alive thing that has fully relied on me to be, just that, alive.

I keep our home the way I’ve watched my mother do it. Using her same candlestick holders, Christmas tree-decorating rituals, dish-washing techniques. I fold the couch blankets before moving to my bed, no matter how sleepy I am after dozing in the TV-lit living room – a habit my father, for better or worse, ingrained in me.

As I sit here today, at the precipice of my first spring in this apartment, I notice some odd-looking branches in the tree outside my front window. I’ve only ever seen this particular plant in its Hobby Lobby faux-flower form: a typical tree branch, unassuming at first sight, but upon closer look – covered in soft, furry gray bulbs. I remember my best friend saying that when she and her sister went grocery shopping with their mother and one of these strange silky podded plants was featured in the flower section, her mom would snap them each a tiny bulb, as a pet – if you will, to carry around and hold while they went about their errands – feeling the soft silken hairs between their tiny fingers. My best friend and I kept a fake craft-store version of the soft and strange fluffy-branched plant in a vase in the dining room of the apartment we shared together, the one we said goodbye to last September. 

So, as I study these familiar yet mysterious twigs in my new-ish front yard, I pick up my phone to ask Google what they are.

“Pussywillow” pops up from my clumsy search: “fuzzy gray on tree.”

Wikipedia goes on, “Before the male catkins of these species come into full flower, they are covered in fine, grayish fur, leading to a fancied likeness to tiny cats. The catkins appear long before the leaves, and are one of the earliest signs of spring.”

…

Later today, I’ll go help my parents unpack at their new condo. I’ll choke down (as will they) some of the bitter goodbyes in order to make room for the sweet newness that will start here, in this place they’ll now call home.

Call me sentimental, attached, fearful of the end, haunted by the ticking of time. Call me cheesy, soft and sappy like the great poets – endlessly comparing their love affair with life to the fragrant lily, the enchanting rose. But here I stand, affected – yet again – by the soft, small, sacred, short-term little something that I tend to, which will inevitably be greeted by its own end someday. Something that offers the promise of something new. Something, like the chance to open my soft self up to another something again.

*

My Lovesong, My Lungsong

At the risk of sounding like I’m regurgitating a guided meditation (although what is so wrong with that?) I will stray away from beginning this string of thoughts by saying something like, “control your breath, control your life,” or “inhale lots of love in, exhale lots of love out,” both of which (learned from guided movement leaders) have become mantras in my daily life. But I guess I did just start with them, which I think I’m okay with. 

But yes, breath. That’s where I’d like to begin. And frankly, end. And really, acknowledge as we take each step in between. 

Breathing is step one. Bare minimum. And not to mention, undeniably involuntary. And before this year, I don’t think I really gave breathing a second thought.

I had always heard that to calm down, you can pay attention to your breath. I think maybe I had tried that out from time to time. But my old pal called My Breath and I really weren’t so well acquainted. I noticed her like, once every couple of years when I walked up a flight of stairs or freaked out about something, but other than that I was pretty much bff’s with the classics: My Mind (yikes), every once in a while My Body (when I wasn’t busy picking her apart), and occasionally, if I was super lucky and in tune with things, My Heart (which, when set to the right frequency, I would later find out to be a sort of sister to My Breath.)

Over the summer, I started running for the first time in my life. Sure, before that there was the annual grade school mile-run in gym class. There was also the feeble attempt in my late teens to jog around my neighborhood when I started speaking unkindly to the aforementioned My Body. Those, of course, were unsustainable due to the lack of purpose and general goodness behind their intentions. 

This time, it was different. I wanted to really be in My Body and see where she could take me (physically, mentally, spiritually.) This time, I said hello to someone I didn’t know too well, even though she had been there since the exact moment I entered this world, covered in blood and guts and screaming for dear life. Her name was My Breath and she’s one cool-calm-collected gal (calm and present in the face of a screaming and frenzied me — be it newborn or adult.)

So, back to the running. It became clear to me very early on in this process that the reason I created the storyline that “I can’t run” was because I was giving zero regard to the way I was using my long-lost, calm-cool-collected friend. I wasn’t thinking about how I was breathing. The moment I controlled my breath, slowed it down, used it as a metronome for the movement of my legs, my arms, the thud of my feet against the earth — that was the exact moment I realized that I could, in fact, run. 

There were a lot of other things that changed after I became better acquainted with my breathing — my old gal pal. Yoga, cardio workouts, mediation, walking down the street, falling asleep peacefully at night. It was like my friend, My Breath, was the key to unlocking a new world, including many of the things that I had written off as just “not for me.”

So, as I said, a lot of things happened in the summer of 2020. And a lot of them had an eerily obvious common thread. 

It was the summer the globe was shut down because of a virus that largely affects the respiratory system — a virus that has taken the lives of many, leaving insurmountable grief in its wake.

It was the summer a social movement exploded after yet another black man was killed at the hands of the police while gasping the words, “I can’t breathe.”

It was the summer that ALS took my Godmother’s life, ultimately suffocating her after the neurodegenerative disease rapidly attacked her nerve cells — leaving the most energized woman I know reduced to sitting in a chair, unable to breathe.

I put together the pieces of this haunting puzzle as I turned the corner of my parent’s street on my mid-June afternoon jog — tears streaming down my face, lungs filling and emptying.

The summer of 2020 was not subtle (or gentle) in its attempts to point me to the importance of breath. And so I learned to breathe. I learned that My Breath is my life. My Breath is Me.

My yoga practice has taught me that maybe, just maybe, another way to think about the spirit of who I am, the heart that beats within me, the essence of my being — is breath. I am alive. My heart is beating. I am a breathing thing. And sometimes, (all the time) that is enough. 

Strip away the doing, the working, the achieving, the making, the wanting, the thinking, the spinning. All that’s left is the being. All there is, is the slow rise and fall of the chest. The rhythmic pulsing of the heart. 

This important year of quiet solitude, of unemployment and mediation, has given me the unique and invaluable gift of knowing that I could be doing literally nothing, and I am still a perfect and worthy being. Being. Not a perfect and worthy doing. I am not a human doing. I am a human being who breathes and recognizes herself as being alive in a beautiful and tragic world.

I am not the first nor the last person to think about this. In fact, I feel a little silly that it has basically taken me 26 years to pay attention to the fact that my lungs and heart have been operating for every single second of my life.

This world is consistently inconsistent. We can rely on literally nothing to stay the same. Obviously, those around us. The circumstances of our lives, time itself. But even our own selves? Can we rely on that to stay constant? Far from it. 

Did you know that in the timeframe of seven years, all the cells in your body are replaced with new ones? That basically means that we are becoming completely and entirely new people every seven years of our lives, down to the very cells that make us up (not to mention the things we do, what we care about, music we listen to, people we meet, etc. etc.) 

The body’s cells regenerate. The thoughts shift from second to second. The heart wants what the heart wants and what the heart wants changes by the time it finds its very next beat.

Breath, however, is always here. There is not a moment it leaves us. It is the intimate, quiet, secret love song that our beings create for us. The soundtrack that plays behind the ever-changing, chaotic windstorm we call our lives. 

I don’t know much. And I can’t say I’ve done much of anything in the last year that I can knit together into a quilted wisdom or philosophy. I have very little to show for a year of life in terms of achievement, work or deed. 

But what I can say is that this year, I learned how to breathe. I listened to my lung song more this year than I ever have in my (hopefully) quarter-of-a-life. And to me, learning this song, listening to it, humming along — has given me a new way of looking at myself. And it has meant everything.

So let those cells shift, baby! Let the thoughts roll away in the wind! Let the heart want and let it break and let it go when the time is right. Join me in the beautiful release. But know that I am here, sitting with My Breath. I am spending more time with her and I’m learning to pay less mind to the changes. I let go a little more, and I am a tiny bit more free.

And if you need me — maybe, just maybe — you’ll find me strolling around with a little extra pep in my step, whistling along to the song that I’ve learned is me.

Working

I was sitting on my front porch where I was writing a love letter to myself signed off with, “I’m proud of you for trying,” after a week of teary panics and picking apart the giant looming black blob in my brain and wondering what direction I should point my body. I was sitting there in that spot, after taking some time that day to gently heal my own self, to access my breath and tend to the parts of me that are mine alone and belong to no one else but myself, the parts that I must remind my own self to nourish and protect even when it’s been a long while and I seem to have forgotten to do those chores. It was a day of doing a lot of that type of gentle work after coming from a place of unemployment and anxiety and pandemic and living in my mind and in moments that were never now.

When I was sitting on my front porch writing that love letter to myself and being proud of myself for trying, a very tiny human passed by my apartment with someone that I assumed to be her father. This was a very small human indeed and one that could talk, but only a little bit due to her tiny size. She was looking at me, the way that tiny humans do, in a way that makes you feel like they are seeing the real you because they are small and pure and do not pass judgement and because it seems that when they are looking at you, there is really nothing else in the world but you and your fascinating existence in that moment, which you understand to be true because of the way they stare without knowing the manners that say that they probably shouldn't be staring. Yes, that was the way the tiny human was looking at me while I was sitting in my state of self-repair.

She pointed at me and looked at the bigger human who I believed to be her dad and then her dad looked at me and then back at her and said, “Come on let’s go, she’s working!” My first instinct was to feel a little joy due to the cuteness, followed by a little shame due to the fact that I actually was not working due to the fact that I was laid off from my job and trying to figure out what was next for me and how I felt about being a human in the world. But then my second instinct (the truer one) was a thought that said, “Today, my work is to reconnect to the secret tree-house part of myself that I deeply love and will never ever be able to lose no matter how lost I feel” and that is the thought that stuck. And then the third thought (a transcendental one) was picturing the tiny human version of myself on the sidewalk, unapologetically staring at the older and “working” version of myself, and there would be a sort of unspoken recognition and tender understanding floating in the air between us that sort of looked like sparkling sunbeams and, in human-word terms, meant that both me’s knew that they were proud of simply being alive and recognized that they were both made of the same very serious and very soft stuff.

House Sparrow Booties

I wake up a quaratined brat with a bad attitude. A trapped pack rat with no way out.

I suppose that setting up a blanket in the field across the street might help.

Yes, it might. But sometimes my sunny little smartass self can’t be fully cured in an instant, despite what I often want to believe. Sometimes, I have to sit with it.

So I take my annoyed piss poor attitude, a blanket and a stack of too many books than I can read and plop myself in the open field.

And no, I don’t magically feel perfect. My scale keeps tipping back and forth because that’s just what happens sometimes when you’re an emotion/environment-driven acrobat who swings like a circus act from one mood to the next, dragging her fellow gymnasts who come tumbling with her when she feels herself going down.

So, anyway, my silly scale is tipping this way and that way and I think it might be a good mental practice to sit and watch while it happens.

Tipping to the more benevolent side feels promising as the sun soaks into my skin through my flannel while I listen to “Roses” by the Staves, which always seems to take me on a journey. But it flips right back up when a stupid man in a stupid car pulls up with a stupid freaking DRONE and starts flying it directly over my head. I plummet way back to the bratty end, but then come back again slightly as I laugh out loud thinking about how ridiculous the idea of a flying a drone is. The audacity of droners. Unbelievable.

Creatures all around, life and earth sounds abound (good side) when I notice a swarm of gnats above my head (hold my hand as together we plunge to the dark side and I punch the bug-filled air, looking like a deranged sun-sick fool, might I add). Then, the sight of a delightful little girl, adorned in full pink, riding on something that looks like a tiny motorized scooter without the handlebars (also pink) and seems to be far too small of a living being to ever be riding such a complex apparatus unattended; all whilst nonchalantly and almost sassily snacking on a granola bar (needless to say, I shoot to the joyful side of my unreliable scale.)

As you might have guessed, Sherlock that you are, I quickly bounce right back when I hear a group of three teenage boys walking a bulldog dog pass by, conversing about their particular strengths and weaknesses when it comes to driving a car (I’ve found that since being in isolation, my usual eaves dropping skills have enhanced at lest tenfold, given my dramatically decreased amount of human contact. I have developed the audacity to stare into the eyes of every passerby for far too long, quite obviously listening to conversations without a single iota of shame.)

Says one of the three stupid little shits: “I’m a decent driver, but every so often I get a little retarded and road-rage is the, like, only place I can take out my anger.” (Incredible! The r word! People still can’t grasp that one! Not to mention the concept of putting people’s lives in danger as a manifestation of this teenage angst you possess! Amazing!)

And now there are a couple of things that should be delights but feel more like sarcastic digs to me, kicking me while I’m down: A car with all windows rolls up but a radio volume that booms past the fortress shouting AT ME SPECIFICALLY, “this too shall pass,” I’m assuming from a Christian radio sermon or something—I don’t know, but I’m pissed about it.

Additionally, an older man and woman on their late afternoon walk, the man with a small speaker strapped around his waist, blasting the song “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” by Chicago... admittedly an absolute banger, but when I realize the title, I take it as a personal attack, or as a sign that this man expects me to APOLOGIZE for being QUARATINED against my WILL.

Anyway, I should mention as I wrap up this unbearably whiny, good-for-nothing account of my afternoon, sitting for two and a half hours on the blanket in the open field, which was supposed to be peaceful but instead gives me road-rage when I’m not even on the rode (notice how I didn’t use the r word when describing my road rage because I’m a decent human being??)—anyway, the entire time I’m in the field, I am surrounded by dozens of tiny house sparrows (which I typically find a bit annoying because they fly around in such access when I typically want to be wowed by a rare warbler or chickadee, like the real piece of work I am) but these little cutie patooties are right at my eye level as I lay on my stomach reading, and they are spreading themselves all over the field, me at the center of their arrangement, as they peck their little heads into the slightly overgrown grass. And while they do, all I can see are their little sparrow booties sticking straight up in the air like the little flirts they are.

My Friend The Encourager

And all the times he shows up

Mural by artist Dallas Clayton

It was 3 am on a Saturday night and I didn’t expect to learn anything profound about human nature.

I didn’t think I would do much figurative dot-connecting after drinking for a few hours at a concert, eating two slices of Big G’s pizza, and making a late-night appearance at the Drum and Monkey Pub. My friend works as a bartender at said pub and I was staying at her place in the city for the week.

We had hung out at this bar quite a bit during my stay and I was loving it — flying high on some big-shot thoughts that went something like, “My one friend works at this bar, so we are basically the characters in How I Met Your Mother when they have the same booth every night, or like in New Girl when Nick is a bartender and his friends hang and drink after closing time.”

Some snapshots of what I thought my life was suddenly like, sitting at a bar that I had been to three times

So my two friends and I peeked into the window of Drum (what the ~regulars~ call it) late that night and saw a lot of smoking and shenanigans happening inside. Like I said, the confidence was in full supply, so we walked in like we owned the place.

After walking in, it was immediately clear that a rap battle was going on.

The battle was between the bouncer and the owner of the bar. The two of them were distinct characters and I instantly knew I liked them.

The owner of the bar, Ben, is the closest a normal person has ever come to Jack Black — in appearance and also in general behavior. His rhymes were solid, especially considering the fact that he was simultaneously preparing drinks for the employees who were smoking cigs (and other such things) on the other side of the bar.

After Ben’s verse collapsed, a new treat followed. The bouncer, who was ever-so-endearingly named “Shadow”, proceeded to blow our minds with what escaped his mouth. This guy — who reminded me of an even friendlier Will Smith but with long locs and a sweet expression— he could rap. And it was better than any song on the Big Willie Style album, I’ll tell you that much.

I couldn’t believe that he was spitting these cleverly crafted and perfectly witted words without having any time to prepare. I was just sitting there in awe — clapping and screaming, high-fiving my hands off. We all chatted in between his bars, laughing and back-patting Shadow.

At some point, I gained the courage to start spewing my own horrible verses. I even interrupted Shadow’s rap about cheese with a hook I jacked from some other preexisting melody. Mediocre and unoriginal to boot.

But Shadow was going crazy. He kept applauding my less-that-average rhymes and poorly-constructed lyrics. He was treating me like I was Beyonce and Jay-Z combined. It was no such thing. It was brutal. But he was kind and I was having fun.

I still can’t exactly explain why, but Shadow was someone I’ll remember for a long time. Something about his kind face, his bright presence. He was hilarious, welcoming, reassuring.

I know it was just a silly little rap battle in a silly little bar in the wee hours of the morning, but it was something I needed at the time — a few months after graduating, still unemployed and feeling more lost and lonely than I’d ever felt.

That night at 3 am with my friends, Ben the Bar-owner, and Shadow the Rapper (aka Angel), I was given something special. I needed this little glimpse as a piece to a puzzle I’d been struggling with over the past few months.

I was figuring out a little something called encouragement.

…

I had been learning this lesson on encouragement for a few months without even realizing it.

I learned it when I talked to my best friends over the phone, some hundreds of miles away, who would lend me kind words when I felt like the world’s lamest and most directionless person.

I learned it when I saw my mom, day after day, being burdened with the weight of my whole family’s stresses, mine included. How she continues to tirelessly hand out nuggets of support and motivation to us every single day, while still trying to stay positive and motivated herself.

And I learned it each time I witnessed someone speak an encouraging word to another weary soul, noticing it more and more each time and then saying to myself, “I could do that. To make the world lighter. For someone else. Or maybe even for me.”

…

I have a little book of words and illustrations I bought for a couple of my best friends (and one for myself) called Think About Someone You Love by Dallas Clayton.

The charming and adorable little drawings and sentiments are a great pick-me-up, especially at a time when everything around you feels like a million little question marks adding up to an even bigger question mark- shaped universe that you can’t seem to find your place in.

Some of Clayton’s encouraging artwork

After reading it through a few times, I eventually grew very fond of a page with a small drawing of a colorful and moppy little creature. Above the drawing is written ENC-OUR-AGER. I found myself using clothes pins to hold open and display the little book to this page, with The Encourager shining all of his encouragement upon me every time I’d let him.

The Encourager drawing (right) and my display of it in my bedroom (left)

One day when my mom came into my room, I pointed to the displayed picture and said, “Look! It’s you!” She gave a half-hearted chuckle that led me to believe that she didn’t even realize her true identity. Either that, or she is the most humble Encourager of all time.

I know it’s small and silly but The Encourager helps me. He reminds me to build others up. To remind them that the rhymes they’re rapping sound smoother than they think and their days ahead are brighter than they know. Even at the times when I feel down myself.

He reminds me that even if my life feels different now, and even though this week I’m weepy and feel like the whole world is moving and I’m standing still— I am still good and things will get better.

I am glad to have met The Encourager on that little page of my book, on the phone with a familiar voice, at a smoky bar, in my own home — and even, with a little practice, somewhere deep in my own mind.

…

Last week I made a little deal with myself that I would listen to a podcast episode everyday — just to lift me up and to engage in a fruitful conversation with someone without the talking, just the listening part.

I am a huge fan of the On Being podcast with Krista Tippet. Her voice is like honey and cinnamon and it soothes my sometimes heavy little soul and I love it. She’s like my radio mom.

Krista was interviewing an illustrator and writer named Maira Kalman about her delicious art and gorgeous outlook on the world. I found myself hanging on each of their every word.

Some of Maira Kalman’s lovely illustrations (can you tell that art encourages me?!?!?!)

Besides reading the obituaries everyday because “it shows all the little things that make up a life”, being incredibly in love with Abe Lincoln, and walking twice a day with her friend in Central Park, Maria also creates brilliantly colorful and playful illustrations.

When she and Krista were discussing her illustrations, Krista mentioned that Maira’s art and writing are almost like little encouragements (there’s that word again, can you find the theme!!!)

Maria responds and says, “Right, but then I get annoyed at being so encouraging, and I say, ‘Wait. I have black moods too. Don’t be so encouraged. It’s not so good.’”

And then Krista comes back with, “ I know what you’re saying. That sounds kind of cheesy and romantic and optimistic, to be encouraging. But it’s not. It’s complex.”

Maira agrees and Krista notes that although it may be unfashionable to be encouraging, it is also very necessary.

This was another piece to my encouragement puzzle. Encouragement is hard work. It’s not all roses and butterflies and it’s not easy as pie.

To be in conversation with Maira Kalman is like wandering into one of her cartoons in The New Yorker. Millions have been prompted to smile and think by Maira Kalman’s illustrated revision of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style or a New York Times blog or her lovely books and her drawings about dogs. Her words and pictures bring life's whimsy and quirkiness into relief right alongside its intrinsic seriousness, its most curious truths.

I highly recommend that you give the full podcast a listen for some good soul food

The Encourager is strong. The Encourager is brave. The Encourager has the ability to quite literally instill courage and will into someone else. This is quite the job we’re given.

I love a good punk rock or indie song about how some dude’s girl left him so the world is a cryptic place just as much as the next gal (their words are true to them and their art is valid), but I think the Cat Stevens of the world are the real MVPs

Literally the most encouraging song of all time which I blast in the car when I feel like an unmotivated doofus

It’s tough to be The Encourager and it’s not always the sexiest thing on earth. But the world desperately needs it.

…

I know that I have a tendency to connect the dots.

I know that I want everything to come back to everything else and have a grand reason and a greater purpose that all boils down to one little take-away wrapped in a tiny present with a bow on top.

I know I’m this way and I often need to settle down and tell myself, “Girl, it’s just life — we don’t have all the answers!”

I know that life isn’t one big Full House episode when Stephanie keeps getting hints of a lesson she has to learn about sharing or growing up and then as if it wasn’t clear enough to the audience that this is the point of the episode, we reach the end of the 30 minutes and we hear the light, emotional music in the background and Danny sits her down on her ballerina bed and gives her the big life lesson speech and and we all smile and nod our heads and say “Mmmhhhmm that’s nice” and feel good forever.

I know this isn’t how real life works. But I think there’s a middle ground.

I think that sometimes, if we listen to people and keep our eyes and ears open like when the greatest living poet Mary Oliver says, “Attention is the beginning of devotion” and realize that sometimes we are quietly and discretely given the pieces in a few different places. And if we just pay a little closer attention, maybe we can put together a puzzle that can teach us how to be better at treating other people and maybe even ourselves.

Maybe The Encourager lives inside each of us.

Maybe we just have to listen a little more carefully to hear him.

Maybe he’s just waiting to bust out and make a grand entrance.