For the Winter Solstice, Stillness and a Great Shout of Joy

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born. 

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world. 

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say. 

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard. 

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow 
difficulty 
of remembering 
how everything 
is born from 
an opposite 
and miraculous 
otherness. 

Silence and winter 
have led me to that 
otherness. 
So let this winter 
of listening 
be enough 
for the new life 

I must call my own. 

~David Whyte, from "The Winter of Listening"

Siblings

On this day 39 years ago, my brother Brian was born full term, held briefly by our parents and then died a few hours later due to complications likely caused by human error at the hospital. I was two and do not remember, yet I must have been attuned to the grief in our home. My older brother Patrick, age six at the time, remembers our father taking him to McKennan Park to attempt to explain how the little baby we were all so excited to meet had gone to heaven.

Now that I have two healthy children of my own after losing one baby in an early miscarriage, it leaves me breathless to imagine the pain my parents went through - still go through - grieving the sudden loss of this child. I think about Brian and try to imagine what he would have looked like now as an adult, what passions and interests he might have had, what interesting things he might have done with his life.

I recently saw this family portrait honoring children lost to miscarriage, as part of a campaign to promote October as SIDS, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Month. I didn't know this organization existed until a few weeks ago. Many of my friends and family have had miscarriages, but it is something most people don't talk about or have a space where they can talk about it. I wish I'd know about this organization when I had my miscarriage.

A few weeks ago, the three siblings I grew up with all came to visit along with our mother. We four kids try to see each other individually a few times a year but rarely are we all together at the same time, being dispersed around the country. I wish I could just run over to dinner at my sister's, have a beer with my older brother, go to the theater with my younger brother, laugh with their spouses, play with their kids all a lot more often. Not every family gets along and we're lucky to actually like and admire each other.

Photographer Nicholos Nixon took Forty Portraits in Forty Years of his wife and her three sisters. I love to imagine my siblings and I in a project like this, with Brian in the photographs with us.

Gloria

Sunday night I heard Gloria Steinem in conversation with Cheryl Strayed at a sold-out Benaroya Hall benefit for Hedgebrook, a women's writing retreat center on Whidby Island (the only place of its kind in the world and where I dream of someday having a residency in one of their cozy cottages). Gloria is on tour for her new book My Life on the Road, part of which she wrote at Hedgebrook. My friend Julie accompanied me, along with her daughter Fern still in utero. Tiny baby Fern surely felt the high energy, intensity and camaraderie in the beautiful symphony hall. Her mom and I were riveted and emotional throughout the evening.

A few of Gloria's great quotes from the evening:

Travel is the reason I have hope.

Telling our story is the most revolutionary act.

Your story is your credibility.

All social change comes from talking circles.

Change grows up like a tree, not from the top down.

Don't listen to me, listen to yourselves. 

Women grow more radical with age whereas men tend to grow more conservative with age.

Just as women deserve to be whole people, so do men. 

The biggest obstacle to Equal Rights Amendment is that people think we already have it.

I was shocked and deeply mortified to realize I was one of these people who assumed the Equal Rights Amendment had long ago been ratified - but no. It needs to be ratified state-by-state and 15 states have yet to do so. It is beyond appalling that this legislation from 1923 has not been passed, despite being introduced in every Congress since 1982.

There is so much work yet to be done, and all of us in the crowd were electrified and inspired. Gloria sent us all off into the night, telling us to greet a few people in the crowd we didn't know, as we might find a new friend, a new job, a new lover, a new community. Indeed, this is community building from the ground up. Thank you, Gloria for leading the charge.

Georgia's First Birthday

Georgia turned one last week. After being a calm and easy baby, she has recently morphed into a very opinionated and determined little girl. She points insistently and/or shrieks like a banshee for everything she wants, squirrels food in her cheeks and crawls fast to keep up with her brother (she loves me, but she adores him). She's very social and gave me a workout at a friend's housewarming party as she explored every nook and cranny. Sometimes, she likes to sit quietly to flip through books, squealing at the pictures. She has lengthy nodding conversations with her Daddy, both of them smiling and bobbing their heads like courting mallard ducks or polite old Japanese ladies. On walks in her stroller, she strains against the harness to engage with the world, to get closer to dogs and ducks and people and all the action. She rocks her whole body to music or twists from her waist and claps her hands. She hoards remote controls and can turn the stereo on. off. on. off. When I'm in the kitchen, she'll come pull herself up to hold onto my jeans and suck her left thumb, hanging out with me. 

One year old...such a milestone and such a fleeting moment in time. I took advantage of the occasion to schedule a photoshoot with Julie Nimmergut of The Hidden Lens. Thank you for all the great shots, Julie! 

The Bell Ringer

He calls himself the Bell Ringer.

We see him about once a week at Greenlake or in Ravenna Park, whizzing by on his festively-adorned bicycle shouting happy salutations and playing his kazoo. Today he was standing next to his bike, kazoo-ing, so we stopped to chat.

The first thing he said to Xavier was: "You know that you are a prince?" And turning to Georgia: "And you are a princess!"

I couldn't place his accent and he told me he was French-Canadian. In the first few minutes of our conversation, he said, "You know I've been visited by an alien. An angel. You know what he told me? Be nice. So that's what I do. I worry people think I'm crazy, but I just want to be happy. When the angel merged into me, you know what I said? I said 'Oh my God, oh my God.' Then he took me up to heaven and you know what I said? I said, 'I'm home.' We've all been dead before. It changed my life. I wasn't spiritual before, but now I am."

Then he pulled out a well-worn marionette and danced him about for my children. And tooted his kazoo as we waved goodbye.

Storm King Art Center

Birthday Reminders

Birthday season is underway in a big way. I've had a little soiree with friends in Seattle, cards have been arriving in the mail, gifts have been opened from my kids and my husband. Dear friends showed up on my doorstep with a candle stuck in my favorite pastry from Cafe Besalu and now we are in New York for my actual birthday. Since last year's birthday was a bit of a blur as I waited for my overdue daughter to be born, this one I'm happy to lap it all up. I've been rereading old journals and I came across a few quotes to remind myself about this whole birth/day thing. Thanks for all the love sent my way this week. I'm sending it right back at you all!

I am a woman giving birth to myself.

          ~ Anonymous

The miracle is to walk on earth.
          ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

We can never be born enough. We are human beings; for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery, the mystery of growing: the mystery which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves.
          ~ e. e. cummings

Though I was reluctant to be born, I was attracted by the music. I had plans. I was entrusted with carrying voices, songs, and stories to grow and release into the world, to be of assistance and inspiration...it is this way for everyone...we each have our own individual soul story to tend.
          ~ Joy Harjo

Look: I am still alive--

in fact, in bud.

          ~ Kathleen Jamie

Unfold your own myth.

          ~ Rumi

Don’t forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across

the universe.

          ~ Mirabai  

Being who you are is a prayer.

          ~Grazyna Wolska

If only you will choose again, this once more, to be born.
          ~ Jane Hirshfield

I am. I am. I am. 

          ~ Sylvia Plath