The sound rises and falls; it's a sigh, a breath, a swooshing, whooshing, constant. Against the wind, our humidifier sounds thin and metallic; it's just a faint hum in the corner. Every so often there's low click as Chris turns the page on his Kindle. His hand is on my thigh. My head is on his shoulder.
"What are you reading," I ask, pressing closer.
"Sherlock Holmes," he says, "I'm almost finished."
"Mmm," I murmur.
His shoulders are broad. His muscles are at rest.
Is it good, I want to ask, but I stop myself and look out the window. I trace the outline of the trees against the mountains. The wind is strong today, I think. The sky is bright.
Chris' heartbeat is slow and steady. My eyes grow heavy, and suddenly I'm somewhere else. I'm thinking about aftermaths: a sink full of draining water; skin scrubbed hot and pink; a washcloth, wrung-out and dripping; drops sliding off the counter; a slippery spot on the tile, too small to be important.
Then Penelope rushes into the room and I realize I've been sleeping. "Will you zip this up for me," she asks, holding out a costume. "I want to wear it because it's the most beautiful dress I have, and I want to be the main character. Isn't it beautiful, Mommy?"
I squint my eyes at her. My contacts slide and shimmer.
How long have I been sleeping?
"Yes, baby," I say, and my lips crack.
"Am I the main character?"
"You're one of them," I tell her, without understanding. A spot of blood appears on the corner of my mouth. I wipe it off and lean forward to reach her zipper.
She smiles up at me, and oh! it's her chrysanthemum smile, all full lips and upturned cheeks, so round and sunny: it's a smile like sunlight; a smile like laughter; a smile that makes my heart jump, happy, and when she scampers out of the room I find myself beaming down the hall behind her.
"Katherine," she's calling. "Katherine!"
And suddenly I see I've been sleeping in sunlight all the while. I've been on top of the covers, in bare feet and shorts, with the curtains wide and the door thrown open. Me, the prudish girl, the slender one who likes to be covered, and my smile lingers. Chris shifts his arms slightly. I squirm closer, searching for the curve of his hips, and he turns off his Kindle. He wraps his arms around me. We both yawn.
I snuggle back into my spot on his shoulder.
***
Sometimes I think if I write my life like a story I'll be able to look back and find meaning. I think there will be some commonality between the moments that stand out to me, the ones that seem worth recording, and I'll be able to force them into shape. I think I'll find a lesson or a metaphor or a theme, but I never do. To me, life just seems like a series of moments sandwiched between other moments. I don't know how to stitch them together, but if I had to try I'd say I'm struggling to learn something like this: life can be beautiful and life can be boring; it's full of sudden joys and sudden pains, and it's almost never as hard as I want to make it.
What about you? Do you think about life like a story? What do you feel like you're learning?
I am in awe of you. The way you tell your stories is AMAZING. When I was a little girl, I actually narrated my whole life as a story inside my head. ("She is walking down the street. She picks up chestnuts and puts them in a bag.") It's like I was starring in my own movie and I was writing the screenplay as I went along. :-) As much as I have often thought "what an odd little kid I was!" I realize now that this was quite useful. I was taking it all in and writing it down in my head. And now, when I go to write, it is all there for me to draw upon. So much of it is in my book and will be in my next book. I don't know if all writers do this, but it is, in part, what made know that a writer is what I am.
ReplyDeleteOh! My girls do that, too! I eavesdrop on them all the time because it's so sweet and wonderful to hear. They're constantly saying things like, "She slips quietly down the stairs. A dog barks! 'Oh no!' she gasps, clutching the rail..." They also love to dictate stories to me so I can read them back over and over. I don't remember whether or not I did things like that when I was a kid (although I do remember casting myself as fictional characters and making up back stories), but it delights me. Maybe I'm raising little writers! :)
DeleteThat is a good question. Every day I learn something. How much strength I have that I didn't think I had. Sometimes though people fail they are just trying there best and we all make mistakes. I think that is what I like about life the best.
ReplyDeleteI think learning you're stronger than you realized is a great lesson! I'm always surprised by how much I still have to learn about myself and about the world and about what it means to be human, but you're right: these are lessons we have to learn every day -- and sometimes (for me at least) it's the same one over and over!
DeleteAh! Oh! Yes! This is it exactly for me -- why I write what I write on my blog. It's my way of telling my story, of trying to draw things together, of finding some kind of theme to give so much ordinary-ness some meaning. Sometimes I feel like I find it, other times I feel like I'm just casting my net and pulling it up empty. But oh, the writing down of it all....oh, its so important.
ReplyDeleteI really, really love the scenes you paint here. I think you certainly conveyed the idea of beautiful/boring, joy/pain -- and the startling ease of enjoying it all. The glimpses of your life that you give here make me come back and back, to find out what you're seeing next. I'm so glad you share yourself here. So glad.
I'm so glad you like coming! The work you share on your blog inspires me and, honestly, your talent intimidates me a little, but you make me want to stretch as a writer. I've never seen you come up empty!
Delete:-) Your posts make me feel so emotional in a wonderful way. Life is a story, if we'd like to look at it that way. I often stand back and view mine objectively - and am happy to discover it feels good. Of course, I do wish I could do some things differently, but I don't fret over those.
ReplyDeleteIf you compiled this blog into a book - it would be just perfect.
I am visualizing Penelope's sunshine smile.
You are a beautiful person, inside and outside, Emily. I am privileged to know you.
I think that's my hope. I want to look back at my story one day and to discover that it's good. I mean, my life feels good, living it and creating it -- it feels good, but I hope I'll look back one day and find the hidden lesson. The GOOD. Maybe it's part of my search for God. I'm trying to teach myself something about writing, yes, but there's a part of me that wants to learn something about life and humanity and What It Means to be Living. I don't know how to say it yet (and I don't quite know what I'm doing) but this is my way of trying.
DeleteI think you are on the right track. :-)
DeleteWow, I agree with this. I'm always wondering where to look for God, and I don't think I've done it with writing. One of the reasons I *don't* want to be a writer is because writing is where I go to pour out all the stuff I carry around in my head. I don't feel ready to filter that, yet. Maybe someday. But I could make an effort occasionally to working my way toward God with writing, and I love that idea. I've always felt like my work with kids is my way to reaching toward God, and the results are so much more immediate with kids than with writing! But you do it so well with writing, and I might have to copy that idea every now and again! :)
DeleteAlso, I've been meaning to ask--where did you get these comments with the reply option? I love it! You can have conversations in your comments! It's the best!
That's a conversation I'd like to have: where do you find God? what does it feel like? how do you move past the form of religion -- or the searching -- and forge an authentic spiritual connection? I would love to become a picture of myself: I'm lighting a candle in an old stone church, one where everything's all flickering light and incense and darkness, and I'm kneeling. I'm lost in prayer, but true prayer, and not just aimless thinking; I'm transcendent.
DeleteI can't do it though. The politics get in the way or something. (Maybe it's just doubt?) I don't know, but I can't find it. I'm sure I'm over thinking -- trying to intellectualize and understand instead of just feeling -- but maybe we aren't all supposed to experience God in the same way? Maybe there are different paths to take, and all of them important? I'm not sure. My thoughts are all really nebulous. What do you think? Tell me what it means for you to seek God through your work with children.
As for the comments: I just switched my settings on blogger. Go to Basic Settings > Posts and Comments. Then change your comment location to embedded (I used to have a pop-up window), scroll down to the bottom and add the Comment Form Message. It was really easy! And I LOVE the way it inspires all these conversations!
I have all the same questions as you, and few answers. I was raised Catholic, but never FELT it, in church or Catholic school, or anywhere else related to religion. And I don't think I could go back to Catholicism without wrestling with the abuse scandals. I really feel like the Church harbored evil, for so long, and I don't know how to get past that. All the politics of the Church would be furiously battling in my head while I tried in vain to stop tuning out the homily and listen. Doesn't seem productive!
DeleteChildren bring out the best in me. When I care for them, it creates a space where love can flow right through me and into them, and feed and nourish us both. But I have trouble just leaving it there, and I want to intellectualize it too. Then I get confused and conflicted, and bah! I end up back at square one!
So where do you find God? Maybe in your stories?
I'm going to go change my settings now! Thank you!
I did it! It WAS easy!
DeleteI'm so glad you got it to work! I think it's a great feature blogger added!
DeleteI converted to Catholicism a few years ago and I've definitely struggled with the scandals and politics within the Church since then. I want to embrace the faith, but the corruption in the institution holds me back. I'm not sure how to (or if I'll ever be able to) get past it.
I think (in part) I write as a way to look for a thread of the divine in my own life, which sounds vague, but I don't know how else to say it (and, frankly, I'm not even sure if I understand what I'm saying) (but I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm trying to figure this out while I sit the rug and the girls' "pet" dinosaur, Sky Throw-up, jumps on me and tries to brush my hair). Anyway, I feel like there are certain moments during the day when I feel more aware -- more animated, more alive -- and if I record them, if I thread them all together, I feel like they might form a whole somehow, like the moments themselves might have something teach me about what it means to be human: about love and loss and the struggle for connection. And maybe there's God in that? Although, I'm not sure I'll recognize God if I see Him. (That's a mess, isn't it?) I want something. I'm yearning for something, striving for something, and creating something, but right now, I hardly know what that means or what I'm doing. (I should probably delete this. Do I sound totally crazy?)
Anyway, I loved what you said about love flowing through you and into the children in your care; it was so beautifully and wonderfully put. Really, just incredibly lovely! But I'm curious about how you get confused and conflicted by the feeling. In what ways do you try to intellectualize it?
It is very interesting how you write your post in story form. I use to be confused, wasn't sure if you were just writing a story or telling your life in the story. I get it now.
ReplyDeleteNo I do not think of my life like a story. You are really good at writing your life as a story.
Thanks, Debby! I have a friend who's a photographer and I remember one time he said he thinks about his life as a series of pictures. Isn't that interesting? I see my life as a series of stories and he sees his as a series of pictures. There are so many ways to exist in this world, you know? And it's fascinating!
DeleteSo how DO you see your life?
Hmmm...I guess I don't think of life like a story. I think about it more in terms of -- I don't know -- happiness. That sounds impossibly vague, but I'm not sure how else to describe it.
ReplyDeleteI want to record everything I have the energy to, not to make sure it has meaning, but to be able to look back at it later and prove my happiness. Like the concept of joy -- right now -- might be so intangible that I need to WRITE IT DOWN (or snap a photo) or else it won't have existed at all.
It kind of makes me afraid to stop writing. Because if a happy tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to record the memory of it, was it ever really happy? Which makes me afraid of my capacity to really experience life: am I missing the real beauty of it because I have to frame it in words for it to have mattered?
Derrr....you bring out the ponderous idiot in me, Em. I mean that with utmost love ;)
"We write to live life twice, in the moment and in retrospection." (Isn't that the Anais Nin quote?)
DeleteI think what you're saying makes sense. Writing (or knowing you're going to write) heightens your awareness. If you're looking for joy, writing makes you LOOK for joy; it lets you shape it. I don't think that means you're missing out on real beauty though. I think it means you're training your mind. Day by day, you're becoming more in tune with the beauty all around you -- because you're creating something. At least, I think that's how it works for me.
As for the rest of it, I don't know. Maybe I just need to read some philosophy or something. :)
**Okay, I'm so caught up in your ideas I'm trying to draw Jade into the conversation! Just didn't want you to think I was a comment gossip or something. ;-)
DeleteI didn't know there was anything called a comment gossip. You totally could have gotten away with it, except now I'm alerted to it. I'm watching you, Sovich...
DeleteI might be the first comment gossip in history, actually. I'm very pioneering that way.
Delete"What are you doing?"
"Oh, just spreading rumors about you two comments over."
Is that a problem?
Yes - that is exactly what life is like! Your description is spot on.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful writing!
I'm glad you think so! Thanks, LadyFi!
DeleteI totally think about life as a story...just one in the making and I haven't gotten to the crux of the biscuit yet.
ReplyDeleteBut when I sit down to write, the parts that DO come out, come out from the trials and transformations that already occurred. Even when it's a total fiction: the plot and characters and situations...the heart and the feeling and the conflicts and themes are all colored in with the fat, toddler crayon that is my own experience.
Keep writing these. You never know when you'll be able to use them: whether for grand story arch, or the spaces in between.
Ha! I love that! I just "haven't gotten to the crux of the biscuit." :)
DeleteDid you read Sarah's comment about happiness and feeling like she has to cast things in words to experience joy? When I wrote this post I was only thinking about my own quest to find meaning in my life (and the hope that it would teach me something about Being Human) but now I'm all caught up in Sarah's idea. Do you think art dilutes our ability to experience true emotion? I think the Greeks wrote something about this, actually. I should do some research...
Anyway, sorry for the off-topic response! But since you're using life to create Art I thought you might have an opinion! :)
Hard to say...when I write my life is a story...like that show...I can't remember what it's called...that went around to different towns to random people and asked them what their story was. "Everyone has a story".
ReplyDeleteLife is much like that. Even the boring parts.
I don't think I ever saw that show, but I remember an episode of Oprah (a LONG time ago) where she kept throwing a dart at a map and shouting, "EVERYBODY HAS A STORY!" I was thrilled by the idea. I mean, every house, every apartment, every car full of people we pass, is swirling with stories. The world is wild! And isn't that exciting?
Delete**I think that's one of the things I like about blogging, actually. Everybody has a story...and now we get to eavesdrop on them! :)
DeleteI enjoyed this little part of your story. I think it will eventually all connect for you.
ReplyDeleteI am learning...yikes! What am I learning? I am learning to learn from all of the experiences of my life. Forefront on my mind these days is an ugly break up between a couple of people I know that is unfolding daily (literally) right before my eyes. Their pain and anger is teaching me more about love and family and security.
D
Oh, that's hard. I'm sorry your friends are suffering. I know when I see situations like that it makes me cling to (and appreciate) my own family even more, which is good, but there just isn't any way to avoid that lost, sort of wrenching, break-up feeling. Ugh!
DeleteI used to think of life as a story, but I haven't in a long time. Wonder what happened?
ReplyDeleteYou make napping sound divine. I used to nap too. I know what happened to that ;-)
You know, I think there used to be this thing called uninterrupted napping. Wouldn't THAT be divine?
DeleteI think of life as a story... and I think that you should write yours... it would be amazing... you have a wonderful way with words.... I always feel like I am right there...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Hilary! I have a lot to learn, but one of these days I would LOVE to write my story!
DeleteGreetings from the Amish community of Lebanon,Pa. Richard
ReplyDeleteAnd greetings to you from Japan! I'm guessing from your name you DO think of life as a story?
DeleteLife is absolutely like a story....when we look back upon our lives, so many things make sense; however, as we walk forward, they oftentimes do not. Your keen awareness of these very simple yet intense moments helps time to slow down a bit....like savoring a delicious dessert or really appreciating an intense flavor in your mouth. I did NOT record such moments when I was your age as much......I wish I had. This is amazing...
ReplyDeleteOh! Yes! Writing your life as a way to savor your life. That's it, exactly!
DeleteI spend a lot of time writing things I'm sure I'd forget otherwise. (Like this post, for instance: I fell asleep. Penelope woke me up. I was on top of the covers. She smiled.) But sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't started writing. I wonder which memories would've stood the test of time, you know? It would be interesting to revisit different times in your life and write those lasting memories down!
I think life is a story, but sometimes it takes years to make all the connections!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! It's always hard for me to see how much my girls have grown (even though I'm the one who's constantly replacing their outgrown clothing!) because it happens so steadily and slowly. I think learning's like that, too: the story unfolds, connections appear, but you have to look back *hard* sometimes to see them.
DeleteThis was beautiful! I think this is a great way to remember your life...b/c we are all like our own novels. And naps...well those are just awesome :)
ReplyDeleteWe ARE all like novels, aren't we? And, you know, I've always thought there should be more novels written about napping. Mmm...napping... :)
DeleteLife as a story...yes. The only way I can make sense of any of it is to write about it later. The theme I keep uncovering is the importance of gratitude, whether or not the life I live is the one I imagined.
ReplyDeleteThe cumulative effect of these little snippets of life that you've recorded is such a powerful story. You should compile them somehow...
I think about that a lot, too: about gratitude and whether or not the life I'm living is like the one I imagined. In some ways it's *exactly* what I always imagined. I have the family I always wanted. I get to write. I get to travel. But, at the same time, my real life and my once-imagined life are wildly different in the specifics. I never thought I'd be raising my kids in Europe and Asia -- and I never thought I'd be doing so much of it on my own. I'm grateful though, even if it takes a lot of sorting out sometimes.
DeleteI'm curious about you though: IS your life anything like the one you once imagined? Is it better? Worse? What makes you feel grateful?
(Sometimes I think all my writing is just nonsense and I'm REALLY just using this blog as an excuse to be nosey about people. I can't help it though. You're just so interesting!)
Love this! You know I don't think I have ever thought of life this way. I seem to live in the moment a lot- the past only remembered if I really concentrate. The future always seems far off and uncertain so I just live and enjoy but not in story form
ReplyDeleteI love getting all these glimpses into the way people think. Thank you!
DeleteFor me, the present and the past are all mixed up in each other. I'm constantly doing something in the NOW and daydreaming about something that happened in the past. (I think I'm going to turn into one of those insufferable people who's always repeating the same, tired stories.) But memory is suspect, isn't it? Sometimes my husband and I compare our memories and I wonder if we've even been living the same experience! I guess different things stand out to us differently, which makes the story that much more interesting...it's so colored by our individuality and perspective!
Beautifully written Emily. Sometimes the "scenes" seem unconnected and other times I feel there are whole chapters.
ReplyDeleteRight now there are a lot of scenes and I think maybe a master could edit and figure it out! I have been feeling a little overwhelmed and fragmented though, so maybe that's why it just feels like scenes or vignettes.
Oh yes, I think the rush of every day life definitely makes it harder to stitch all our scenes together. Here's wishing you a little peace and a few minutes of quiet contemplation!
DeleteI've lived my life always rushing to get to the future while most of the time never enjoying the present. I learned recently to stop and enjoy every moment. Great post. Enjoy your Monday!
ReplyDeleteIt's hard not to rush forward, isn't it? Chris and I are always thinking about the next place we want to go, the next adventure we want to have, the next city where we hope to get stationed, and sometimes it's hard to slow down and remember that *this* adventure -- right now -- is amazing. Writing helps, but I totally agree: I still always have that urge to keep moving forward -- to keep exploring.
Delete