Monthly Archives: May 2017

A lot of writers collect things.  Did you know that?  I’m not even going to hazard a guess what that says regarding our personalities.  I’m thinking that if someone did a study about us, funded, of course, by the government because they like to give money to weird proposals, it would determine that writers are one tiny step away from the precipice of hoarding.

I grew up with a would-be-hoarder.  My father lacks the capability to throw things away.  No, it’s true.  I wish I could show a picture of his office to you as proof.  Just imagine stacks and stacks of paper on the floor, desk, filing cabinets.  Books scattered across every surface that paper isn’t already inhabiting.  Random items yet to be identified by anyone other than my dad tilting haphazardly from their perches on the books.  You get my point.  I believe he inherited it on his X chromosome; his parents’ house was the same.  So, to avoid this (potentially debilitating) congenital anomaly, I scrupulously avoid accumulating junk.  When I look at something in a store or on-line and think, Oooohhh, I want that, I then consider whether I want to see it sitting in my house for the next 20 years and where I will put it.  I gather it may be extraneous to say that mostly I don’t purchase much.

Having relayed all of that (Insert drum roll here.), I collect pens, but not just any pens.  I collect fountain pens.  I think that’s apropos to my chosen field, no?  I started writing with a fountain pen in college and got hooked.  (At the time, it was not considered cool.  Draw your own conclusion.)  Some people are addicted to dangerous things; I am addicted to nibs and ink cartridges.  Yes, I admit it’s odd, but there’s something about the gentle flow of elegance that sends my pulse bounding through my veins.  These days, my collection is down to two pens (Yes, 2.).  Some of my beauties I have broken, some I have lost, and some I just rid myself of over the last few years.  (See above commentary on desire not to be an-almost-hoarder.)  The two I still possess, I adore.  (Notice, please, I did not say ‘love.’  I refuse to love something that cannot love me back.)  I’ll describe each, and you can enter my rapt state with me.  The elder sister is cool, sophisticated metal, the length of a Lady Finger, the color of a bright pink rose petal, and dotted with white, dazzling crystals; all her trimmings are the gleaming silver.  The younger is elegantly taller, slimmer, with delicately smooth rosewood skin; her finishes are blonde brass with a silver nib.  Can you see them?

It’s not the pens themselves that I adore (though I could be wrong as I do really, really, really like them).  Rather, it’s what the pens can do that moves me.  Pens contain within them the power to transport to different and wilder or more serene worlds, to alter circumstances and relationships and people, to offer forgiveness and repentance, to open hearts and minds and doors.  As the cool nibs glide across the surface of my paper, I imagine I feel warmth radiate from the ink as it flows, and I, in turn, am warmed by a glow.  In a way, it feels like prayer; please know there is no sacrilege intended here.  This, instead, I recognize as a gift given by Him to my heart.  He knows me through and through as He created me cell by cell.  He knows what shuttles joy straight down to my toes, just as He knows the same for you, will do the same for you.  He offers these tenderly to each of us because He loves us, wants us to find moments of joy that can eclipse the dark realities of our world.  I think celebrating these offerings, in turn, gives Him joy.

So, I find joy in fountain pens and ink as it flows.  Simple, clean, remarkable joy.  May your day be filled with your own version of fountain pens and ink as it flows.

“Running away” sounds so dramatic and just a bit histrionic – don’t even get me started on the origins of that word, but running away is exactly what I’m longing to do.  Am I too old to “run away?”  I did just celebrate a birthday, and, sadly enough, most of the time, I can relate more to my professors than to the other students in my MFA program. So, maybe at my age, I should use a euphemism for this desire to skeddadle.  I could say I was “taking a holiday,” or “adjusting my locale for a different view.”  Regardless, it’d still have the same effect; I’d be ditching this place, probably in the middle of the night – makes it seem more like an adventure – for some place that felt safer, less closed in.  Didn’t the Dixie Chicks sing about “Wide Open Spaces?” But I think their version includes “room to make a big mistake.”  At my age, I’m thinking I only have room left for teensy, weensy errors.  God knows I’ve made enough enormous ones.  I’d like to think I’ve learned something along my not-so-yellow brick road and can now succumb to only polite stumbles rather than huge tumbles.

Of course, I’d take Jug with me when I run.  Can’t leave the dog.  In my whole world, he’s the one thing I can’t lose.  Is that sad?  I can leave everything behind but the dog (and maybe my coffee maker.  Don’t laugh; you’ve never seen this coffee maker.  I don’t think you’d leave it either.)  Right now, my friends and family are aiming darts at my head.  Hold that thought; I’d call or text or email when I landed somewhere soft and fluffy.  After all, children are involved here; can’t disappoint the nieces and nephews and one soon-to-be grand-peanut.  Everything else can be replaced.  Stuff can always be replaced with more stuff – or not.  Sometimes I think that stuff starves my soul.

I’ve existed in this place for longer than I lived in my charming North Carolina house.  Surreal, but true.  I’ve passed my days here without the things that I’ve collected over my life – bits and pieces of my own history, those tangible memories hanging on the walls and sitting on the living room mantle that comfort me when I wonder who I am and what I’m meant to be doing.  I know because of being without that I can do without.  But maybe I’m being hasty.  Perhaps I don’t truly want to box everything and trash it.  Rather, I simply need to cull through those memories and dispose of the ones that no longer contain light and peace and joy; darkness has no place in the life I want.

When I close my eyes, I see my sunroom with the big writing desk in one corner and my reading chair in another.  I see Jug’s toys scattered across the floors and his bed in the foyer where he shoves it into the sunlit squares beaming through the fanlight.  I see my blue bedroom with my white curtains and my bed covered in girly throw pillows.  I see my kitchen with its outdated Formica countertops and the sink that I wish were deeper.  I see the Crepe Myrtle trees in the yard and the ducks waddling across the narrow street.  I see the neighbors tending their flowers with much more deliberate care than I could ever muster and chatting as they stroll by the house.  It’s a life I miss.  How can my heart skip beats for a life I knew only three months?  Perhaps I simply long for the golden-tinged idea of a life.  Hmmmh…nope, pretty sure I miss the life itself.

Getting on with the life you have in front of you now presents a challenge when you still have the option of pulling a quick U-turn for the life you planned.  What to do?  I don’t know what you do, but I hit my knees and pray.  Oh goodness, do I pray!  And the clouds have yet to part and a voice yet to thunder an answer.  I say that a bit facetiously, but I do know that He answers.  He just hasn’t answered this: do I stay here and try to live a life for which I cannot even begin to construct a framework, for which I cannot even begin to dream a picture? Or, do I return to school, to a house, to a life I planned and desired but didn’t even begin to live?  Which path would He have me tread?  Which path leads to His plan?  And there is this: am I willing to let my own dreams slip through my fingers like the sand He created to live the life He designed?  Free will overwhelms and terrifies.  (I wish I were a drinker.  Calm down.  Not heavily, just socially.  I imagine it would make my life a whole lot easier not to mention more fun.)

I sit in the stillness of my room, a room filled with someone else’s memories, and wait.  Choosing stillness, choosing to wait stretches the fiber of my being, twists me into shapes and out of shadows, pulls me into His presence in ways I could never find by myself.  Choosing silence over screams is a leap of faith, sometimes one that requires a push by someone else or a shove by circumstance.  His voice has yet to speak, but He will meet me here just as He will meet you where you are.

Do you trust me?

Today, I sit with the sun on my face, my hands, my laptop screen turning that question over and over in my restive mind.

Do you trust me?

If I asked you this question, if the words were coming from me about me, I suppose you’d respond based on how well you knew me.  If your mother or brother or sister asked, maybe your best friend or your spouse, I’m guessing you’d have an easier time answering.  What if the question came from someone you had never held in your hands or arms or beheld with your own eyes?

Do you trust me?

This time, for me, the question blooms from the latter.  You see, this ferociously beautiful question underlies the most basic fractures of myself, the foundations of all I cling to or claim to be.  This question burrows into my “heart,” which is simply another word for my soul, flourishes there and demands a true answer – no dissembling, no spinning, just acknowledging with all that I have and am.

I left Arizona a year ago in pursuit of a different life, in pursuit of a path – a dream – I knew that He had planned.  He had laid the cobblestones perfectly, and all I need do was follow.  So, I packed up my life, left behind what I knew, and followed.  His voice still echoes clearly telling me that was the life to which He was calling.  Fear coexisted, but I knew He held me – the fire in my soul, in my bones, in my eyes.

Do you trust me?

So, then what do you do when it all comes down? When every step you took in pursuit of your new life twists under you, leaving you lame and frail?  If you know me, you know I had a TBI relapse (“Crisis” fits well here, too.) last September – no warning, no flashy trailer of the coming attraction – just the devastating crash.  What, then, am I left to believe?  The fear doused the fire.

The night I left North Carolina for adequate medical treatment far to the North, a friend asked me what of which I was most afraid.  I think I had three fears that in themselves could’ve blazed across the galaxies:  I would never return to my new home, I would never finish my MFA, I would stay where I was headed for the foreseeable future.  He replied with something that comforted, but couldn’t give me what I wanted most: reassurance that my fears weren’t valid.

Do you trust me?

It’s a choice, really, isn’t it?  When it comes down to everything we believe, faith is a choice.  Do we trust that who we are, what we are, what happens to us when we follow Him is ultimately for our good as He promises?  Even if the pain and fears sear so deeply that getting out of bed each day weighs like an unbearable decision, believing – trusting – hoping – praying, is a choice.  More than that, it’s His gift to us.

I’m not ready or strong enough yet to thank Him for this bend in my road, but even a broken, halting Hallelujah is a Hallelujah.  He is still mine, and I will trust.