Night Pages

Writing guru Julia Cameron suggests morning pages. I prefer night pages. Sometimes.

Listening to Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia" in my headphones. Husband just went to bed. "It's 12:45, maybe you should go to bed", he says on his way up. Just makes me want to stay up longer.

Sitting here trying to process life.

Had a great evening. Great day actually. Not the one I'd originally planned. Plans are funny that way.

Kids were both away (overnights on Friday) and I ended up having the whole day to myself. Funny how that happens more and more the older they get. Funny how hard I miss them, and how much I enjoy my alone time all at once. Is this what happens? The tearing apart of the mothering self?

I'd imagined doing a little housework and then walking downtown to get a coffee and write. When the coffee hour had long passed, I thought I might go to my favorite local pub, get a beer, and write. But instead, I just kept cleaning, organizing, and puttering around the house. One project lead to another. Washing an old (10 years?) Playmobile container and the slimy dinosaurs it had housed for the past several years (trying to remember the times my kids had played with them, so innocently in the mud), trying to find matching socks in the "misc" sock basket (where does the sock fairy take all those socks?), sifting through a pile of old "favorite" books, cleaning out and organizing the game cupboard (including the Disney memory game my daughter used to love playing, and finding myself wondering about the fact that we'd ever supported anything "Disney.")

It was, I suppose, a day spent sifting memories. A day spent contemplating how things are one moment deemed important--like so many old toy dinosaurs-- only to be quickly discarded. There's a big lesson in there.

My daughter (now 12) came home, and seeing my pile of things to get rid of says, quite emphatically, "you're not getting rid of those games." She has a difficult time letting go of the things she's outgrown. So do I. But the housing of these things takes time. The housing and organizing and storing of memories takes up a lot of space. Mental and physical. Why is it so hard to let go of them? Are we afraid the memories will disappear if we discard the items that represent a certain time in our life?

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last week. I've known him for a couple of years, and was surprised to suddenly learn that his family had experienced a house fire a number of years ago. I asked him what that was like. He said that it was actually a very good experience in some ways. Before, he'd felt it was important to keep physical belongings/items intact in order to preserve memories. After losing so many things however, he realized that the memories remained irregardless of the presence (or not) of the item. He said it was an incredibly freeing experience.

I wonder how many people pay for storage units, pay monthly mortgages or rent, just to house memories they're afraid of losing. I wonder how many of us spend our Saturdays organizing, cataloguing, sifting, pondering over, finding storage for, or tending garage sales of, the amazing amount of stuff that enters our lives. And often, we're talking about unwanted, unsolicited-- though often generously offered--gifts that we'd never have purchased ourselves. You know what I mean. All those gifts that come from grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, schoolmates. We're an incredibly generous lot. Aren't we? And so much of it is more burden than gift.

Probably the best gift anyone can give another is nothing. "What I choose to give you today is nothing. Happy Birthday. Happy Kwanza. Merry Christmas. Happy Father's/Mother's/Valentine's Day, etc." Nothing. Nothing.

The gift of nothing. What a concept.

But it's not just the gifts from others that cause such painful consternation. We buy a good deal of it ourselves. "If I just get that one item, I'll be happy." "I'll finally be fulfilled." "My life will finally be organized."

I recently bought a new bath mat. I'd been looking for a new bath mat for several years. Up till the time I bought one, we'd used old towels. You know, gotta have something to sop up the overflow of water. Something to absorb the moisture as one steps out of the shower. For some reason, I convinced myself that a bath mat would make things easier in this department and that it would be a wise purchase. Funny thing about bath mats, they are so thick they hold water too long. Never dry out. And bath mats aren't an easy thing to run through an apartment sized washing machine. But an old towel is. Now I have a sopping wet, mildewy bath mat sitting in a bag on my front porch (where it's been for two weeks getting more mildewy) that needs to be taken to the laundromat. So much for making my life easier.

The older I get, the more I realize, the less I need. Should I rephrase that? Is it proper grammar? How can I be simpler?

I keep watching the birds outside my kitchen window. There's a tree out there and even though it's mid-winter, it's full of rotting (but obviously still edible) apples. Birds of every stripe and color swing back and forth on the fruit, pecking to their heart's content. I watch. And as I watch I'm reminded of a biblical verse I recall from my fundamentalist upbringing. Something about how the creator provides for even the birds of the field.

Why is it that we humans worry so? Why are we so afraid about being provided for? Why don't we trust that our needs will be met? Why do we continue to argue, fight, and conduct wars over resources that we think are necessary to our livelihood? Why is this fight fought primarily by people that espouse a belief in God? You know...the god who says he will provide for all necessities? Brings to mind other biblical events, the ones where the Israelites didn't trust. Where they thought they had to take matters into their own hands.

Didn't this leave them wandering?

And so I guess we go around and around and around. Always circling.

And while I could go round and round and round about my own organizing, sifting, worrying about what to keep, what to honor, what I need, what to worship, what to discard, how best to make a difference in the world, etc., perhaps the lesson is the same. A question. Several questions. What do we give our attention? What do we give our time? And why?

Are we trying to store up gifts? Are we trying to create a legacy? Are we trying to get rich? Are we trying to prove we led valuable lives? Are we trying to prove we were somebody? Are we, out of fear, trying to prove that we existed? If so, I suspect, it's because we don't know and trust who we really are.

And that's why, every once in a while, I find myself wondering what it would be like (god forbid) to lose everything (materially) in a house fire. Why I wonder what it would be like to have nothing but the clothes on my back and my family (clothed and fed) at my side. To be here without all the detritus that we accumulate as time goes on, Disney Memory Games, dinosaur toys given as a promotion 10 years ago by the local bank, or that ugly sweater Grandma sent on my child's 8th birthday.

It's not the stuff. It really is not the stuff. It's the moments. And one day, I'll get it. One day, we'll all get it. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later. For I fear our getting it means much more than any of us realize. Yet I also tend to believe that there is no time limit. That there is enough time in the whole wide universe for each of us to get it in our own due time. Therein lies the beauty of the whole thing. The beauty of life. Of reality. Or our co-existence.

Hmm. I never did get to the thing I'd intended to write about here. Maybe next time. Whatever that means. For while this moment deems itself important to me, and maybe (or not) to you, in the end, it's all we're really guaranteed. What shall we make of it? Nothing that you have to organize, shift around to different piles, take back to the department store with the "gift receipt", haul off to Goodwill, the dump, or the local "free box" (an innovative concept in my own community that at least makes you feel like you're donating to a good cause...until you see a friend pilfering through it happy to find a free Gap sweatshirt). (Not that I don't look through the free box pile myself.)