On taking the next step

In the second week of Advent, my aunt died. Her memorial service was yesterday. She was married to my father’s brother for more than 50 years and was every bit a full aunt to me. My cousin, her son, recently described her as "beautiful, funny, and elegant, as well as gracious and unfailingly kind.” I would add courageous and determined. I had the privilege of going with her to oncology appointments the last year and a half to be her second set of ears, to be her note taker. I watched her closely not only because she is someone I love, but because she is someone I admire and learn from. This is what I saw her do, continuously and without fail: Take the next step; do the next thing. I don’t mean in a getting-things-done sense or in a style of perpetual motion, but rather once her feet were on a path, there was no stalling, no wasting time. There was no lack of action or participation in life due to self-pity or hopelessness. With a full intention toward wellness, her orientation was always: This is my path and here is where I step next. Again and again. I learned from her until the end and am so grateful for how she lived her life.

On making hospital visits

My aunt, whom I love, is very sick and in the hospital. I visited there yesterday, and after getting the updates on her condition, I tried to bring as much of outside life into the room as I could through conversation. It is never easy knowing what to talk about in a hospital room. When I left, I said I’d be back soon.

“Bring more stories,” said my uncle.

“Make them up if you have to,” said my cousin.

This is as a good a rule of thumb about hospital visits as there could be: Bring stories.

Thinking of worm holes and gravitational cross-dimensionality

Last week I saw the movie "Interstellar" with my husband and son. I haven’t read any reviews of the movie but have heard it’s been getting a mixed response. This isn’t a review. I won’t be giving thumbs up or thumbs down. What I will say is this: I’ve been thinking about it off and on for days, and I always like that in a movie, when it offers something to think about. Not in a dreadful way, such as not being able to get disturbing images out of one’s mind. But in a good thought-provoking way. "Interstellar" featured worm holes opening up in the nick of time, black holes, relativity and time, five dimensions, and the ability of gravity to cross those dimensions. It featured people making things, being brave, and figuring things out. It showed people in a long obedience toward finding solutions. This movie was far from “optimistic” in the strictest sense of the word. After all, the world as we know it was ending. But it reminded me of the vastness and mystery of the greater universe of which we are a part and of the power of communal and individual resolve, and I’ve appreciated those reminders this week.

How stories end: reading "What Happened to Sophie Wilder"

What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher R. Beha is a puzzle of a novel. There are layers of meaning embedded in the title alone. What happened to Sophie, the narrator’s former girlfriend after she became his ex? What happened to Sophie at a moment of faith conversion? What happened to Sophie at the book’s end? The narrator and Sophie go back and forth, telling their stories and you hardly notice where this is heading. You get to the novel’s last page and realize that you as a reader are being asked to make a judgment. To weigh in. Pick your ending, but the one you pick, or the one that was real, will have everything to do with what you think really happened, or what in fact really did happen, to her at that moment that she “built her life around.” You see in an organic experiential sense how moments matter; that moments create trajectories that have everything to do with how stories end; that while we may be characters in another person’s story, the other person may or may not know or be willing to admit our real inner and outer plot line. Kudos to Beha for this compelling literary thought experiment.

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[Photo: taken of midwest fall beauty.]

Well played, Parenthood: the tension of choosing passion vs money in work

Last week’s Parenthood episode (“Too Big to Fail”) was spot on in highlighting the tension between choosing passion or responsibility, bliss or the ability to pay for life, within the context of work. This tension is an important thread in my forthcoming book, Finding Livelihood. Drew, a sophomore at Berkeley and the oldest boy in the youngest generation of the Braverman family clan, is feeling pressure to pick a college major. More specifically, he is feeling pressure to pick a major that will lead to a future job that will enable him to pay off his student loans, support himself, and help his family, particularly his sister.

Drew decides that “economics” would be the best choice. His girlfriend objects, saying that’s not who he is, that he’s a poet not an economist. He goes to his uncles for advice. The two uncles are having their own crisis. The company they started and from which they support their families is going under.

Adam, the uncle who is a businessman and has lots of options should the company fail, tells Drew to pick a major by following his dreams and to not worry about making money. Crosby, the uncle who is artsy, lacking in options and a financial safety net should the company fail, and already on the verge of losing his house, tells Drew to learn how to make money and to make as much as he can, because money can indeed buy happiness.

But, counters the business-man uncle, money doesn’t buy happiness, only peace of mind. “The last time I checked, peace of mind is the definition of happiness,” concludes the artsy nearly-broke uncle. The scene ends with a close-up shot of a very confused Drew. Well played, Parenthood.

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[Photo: Screen grab from Parenthood episode.]

Practicing walking with a broken arm

I’ve been off this page for a couple weeks; I'm not the "good" kind of blogger that has a library of prewritten scheduled posts. I broke my arm and it has set me behind in many things. It wasn’t a bad break, not the kind that requires surgery and pins and weeks of physical therapy. It didn’t even require a cast. But I didn’t know that when I fell. The degree that it hurt and the way it wouldn’t move gave me the message that this indeed could be bad.

In the spirit of being vulnerable with readers of this blog, I’ll tell you I felt scared as I walked home with the fresh break, the arm that was whole cradling the arm that was wounded; scared as my husband drove me to the emergency room; scared as the radiology technician positioned my arm for X-rays. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of a broken arm as I was afraid of what I imagined lurked behind the broken arm: the weeks of not being able to work, which mean for a freelancer no sick days and no income, missing deadlines and failing clients; the potential for another crisis to come on the heels of the break, which I'd be less able to handle given the break-related limitations. An Ebola outbreak, for example! While waiting for Vicodin to take effect, why not imagine the worst? I could fall again and break the other arm. I remembered my son’s wrist break that required three surgeries to fix. Irrational fears but fears nonetheless.

I’m old enough that I’ve gone through plenty of other difficult times that more reasonably warranted fear and from which I’ve learned the lessons of coping. I’m grounded sufficiently in faith and experience that I should long ago have learned the basis of courage for every situation. But the arm broke and I felt overwhelmed with potential consequence and became afraid.

The next day, assured of no surgery and with the arm neatly immobilized in a fiberglass splint and that oh-so-effective painkiller in my bloodstream, I felt more relaxed. I dipped into a book on my reading stack. Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. I didn’t make it far into the book (painkillers make you sleepy), but the part I read was enormously helpful and made me feel not so bad about the fear I had felt. It linked “practice” with fear.

Taylor describes how fearful actual darkness can be to walk in, literally, and how for many of us, in our current lifestyles and neighborhoods, we have little experience walking in the pitch dark. She asks, “How do we develop the courage to walk in the dark if we are never asked to practice?” Here, of course, is her transition to darkness as metaphor for the feared unknown. We need to practice walking where we feel fear, practice walking into the unknown.

Practice implies imperfection. There is no requirement to be brave at every turn. We are broken and get afraid, and it is time again to practice walking anyway.