Tell Me...

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it life?

~Mary Oliver

People who write say that being in the mood to write is a luxury. They say you just can't sit around and wait for the muse, because she/he/it may never~ever~come calling. They say to show up everyday, face the page, and just write. Hemingway said to write one true thing (or something to that effect). When I'm really stuck~which seems often right now~I always come back to that: write one true thing, a challenge I've come to see only if you're writing with someone else in mind.

There are so many true things today, but here's one that's fit for company: I want to write like Mary Oliver (don't we all?). Not simply the way she can convey so much with so few words, her gift for invoking the heart and the soul like she does, her capacity for such mind-blowing intimacy with a stone, a blade of grass, a moth, the whole wide world; how her words can liberate you from your dark cellar in an instant; one fragmented sentence and suddenly you can breathe again and light is spilling, I mean seriously pouring through the cracks.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Those two lines were a beacon that changed my life. From a poem about a grasshopper~seemingly anyway~though of course it's never that simple with Mary, not by a long shot; which is why we love her like we do.

And another~

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.... 

.... it was already late enough, and a wild night 

It's possible those poems actually saved my life. It's possible that those poems are why this morning so many years later I was able to go hiking with my daughter and her daughter, my precious, precious grand baby. Whom I've been wanting to write about for such a long time now but could not even begin to find the words to convey that truth; the truth of her, the truth of watching my daughter become a mother, the truth of my own wild heart journey of becoming her grammy. Letters strung together just so outrageously banal when talking about total mind-bending love, terrifying over the top love. Yes, of course I felt and feel that for my daughters as well. From the moment their beautiful beings slid so miraculously from between my legs: deep, abiding, unconditional love, the kind of love you would throw yourself in front of a bus for, that you are blissfully and wistfully ignorant of before that moment in time. But there is something unique about this, something that utterly defies words.

I think it's a time of life thing. I think it's that it's free from responsibility and laundry and cooking and decisions and the terror of making mistakes which of course, are always, always made. Even with the greatest of intentions. Small ones for sure and sometimes, ones that are not small at all, that even decades later you still cannot forgive yourself for. 

But here's one thing I can say. Being with her, holding her, talking with her, giggling with her, feeling her sweet little fingers wrapped tight around my one finger as we walk together; when we are nose to nose and cheek to cheek; when we are watching the hawk, the baby deer, the turkeys, the horses, the moon; rocking, reading books, blowing bubbles, running with our shadows, smelling peppercorn leaves, hugging trees; no matter what we are doing or not doing~not doing can be the best times with her ever~being with her instantly liberates me from anything and everything that is not the moment; that is not the preciousness of life, right here, right now. 

Being with her I breathe more deeply than I ever have in my life. Each breath bringing more softness, more tenderness, more heart than I ever knew I was capable of. And healing. How ironic and lovely and unexpectedly mystifying is it, that this beloved little one is helping my own little one to heal. And as I heal, I am more and more present, more and more alive, not just for her, but for my daughters, too, and for myself, too. I could never have imagined this, not in my wildest dreams~

Just write one true thing. Apparently the rest will take care of itself.

💗