Metamorphosis

"Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis." 

-Martha Beck

Several years ago, a good friend and I got together at our regular pub and compared our notes for our "Best Year Yet."  We'd read the books by that name and we were determined to act as accountability partners for one another as we set goals, big and small, in various arenas of our lives.  One of the introductory exercises the book suggested was to list the Relational Roles we played: Friend, Sister, Daughter, Granddaughter and, for the first time in my post-collegiate years, Girlfriend.  I admitted to Evie over our beers that night that it felt weird to write that, but I needed to acknowledge that a relationship might require some work.

I recently celebrated my first New Year as a wife.  Shortly after we got married last summer, we moved West to start our new life together in a new state.  And honestly, it's been way harder than I'd anticipated.  At some point, I just had the small goal of being invited to a Halloween party, but with a kidnapped child abandoned behind our apartment earlier that day, we didn't even have trick-or-treaters.  These past 6 months in a new city, I've felt more loneliness than I can recall feeling at any other time in my life.  I've uncomfortably faced aspects of myself I didn't know existed, and Dan has stood by me, urging me forward.

Despite the hardships and homesickness, I cannot regret this experience.  In the last year, I seriously and joyfully altered my definition of self:

I pledged my life to Daniel, for better or for worse.

I imagine what our life could be like had we stayed in Minneapolis: living in our same apartment, hanging out with our friends, going to our same old haunts, going to see our same favorite bands play.  In this new year, I am grateful for steadfast friends who have not forgotten they are our friends despite distance, and for this time and space to redefine ourselves and focus on building a strong foundation for our marriage. 

Go

This morning one of my favorite children's authors, Patricia Polacco, posted the following Henry David Thoreau quote on her facebook page:

Go confidently

in the direction

of your dreams!

Live the life

you've imagined.

Ms. Polacco has allayed my fear of thunderstorms in Thundercake and, when we happened to meet her on our cross-country bicycle trip, she encouraged us with a meal, allowed me to fawn over her and take a fan picture with her.

By the time she mailed me a couple autographed books at the end of our trip, I'd taken a job as an assistant at Augsburg Park Montessori School.

Today, 5 years later, I prepare myself to say "goodbye" to this part of my journey.  I have grown up in this community: from assistant to lead teacher. I have learned many lessons here, most importantly: to love steadily, to receive love readily.

Now I must try to "go confidently." I must trust my dreams, the intuition that tells me westward IS their direction, even if staying would be so much easier, so much more comfortable.

Dear Children, My dream for you is that you "live the life you've imagined." Whether that be to grow up into a hammer, a nail, or an octopus; to travel to California, Alaska, Texas, Hawaii; to grow up to live on every continent; to be a mom, dad, or vet. To be the best friend to all your friends. To lead. But most of all, to know and trust yourself.  I have enjoyed watching each of you current and former students (and younger siblings, too!) and coworkers teach me to do this.

2012.love

I welcomed 2012 with the youngest member of my family:

and bid it farewell with the oldest:

Woven through every day in between were the threads of love that bind the eldest generation with the next.

This year I fell in and out of love.  I celebrated my friends' love at weddings around the world. I cooed endlessly at the new babies born this year. I received so much caring support when I was lucky enough to be alive after getting hit by a car while riding my bicycle.  It knocked me down, bruised me up, left me out of commission for a time, but as soon as I could, I got back on my bicycle and rode again, knowing the complete beauty and freedom of riding with the wind on my face.  Even on discouraging days, I rest assured in the love from whence I've come (My grandpa said this Sunday after the Minnesota Vikings' epic defeat of the Green Bay Packers in football, "I turned off the game. Your grandma wanted to talk, and any conversation with her is more important than any football game could ever be."), the pure love exuding from and surrounding all the children I encounter, and I dare to love as best I know how.

Lesson learned

I learned a lesson the first week I was in Palestine.  I'd gone with some friends of my friend there to play pool at the InterContinental Hotel in Bethlehem.

Afterward, we drove out to a dusty road on the edge of town, blasting music through the car's speakers while we pulled beer from bottles and I danced with my new American-in-Palestine friend.  At one point, Firas decided he would offer me a drink by pouring beer from his bottle onto my upturned face.  Missing my mouth completely, it flooded my nose and I came up gasping, spitting and coughing.  We all laughed and resumed our dancing.

Moments later I felt the familiar stream of warm blood oozing out of my left nostril.  In the darkness, I tried to wipe it away nonchalantly, turning from the group toward the stone and rebar wall marking the edge of the road and the steep descent down a mountain, silently wishing for miraculously thicker blood than I've ever been known to have.

"Emily, you okay?" Chelsea asked.
"Umm... do you have a tissue?"
"Oh my god! Your nose is bleeding!"
"It's --"
"Oh my god!"
Suddenly Chelsea was rummaging through her purse and Walid his trunk.

"Oh, no. It's okay.  I'll be fine."
"It's because of the beer!"

"No - it's okay." Shyly, I turned away.  Firas appeared by my side with a wad of tissues procured from some helpful friend, placed a hand on the small of my back and immediately began to assist in ebbing the flow of blood from my face the way I would help one of my students.

"I'm okay," I muttered, "It's not the beer, it's --"

"It's not about you!" insisted Firas, exasperated.  Duly I shut up.

I stopped talking so much, stopped trying to prove myself.  I opened my eyes wider, listened harder.  That night I learned the hubbub to find a tissue wasn't about me.  Rather, these new acquaintances saw a person who needed assistance and they gave their utmost.

Now my friend's husband is posting pictures like this:

because this is happening elsewhere in Palestine:

 Read more 

.

I went to visit Bethany in Palestine and within just a couple days felt like I had real friendships there, people I could count on to have fun and who obviously cared deeply for one another and easily and quickly enveloped others into that culture of care.  I listened to stories, laughed aloud, and cried openly.

Now from this distance and in these circumstances I avidly devour every bit of news I can gather about the unfolding events in and around Bethlehem.  My heart and limbs ache to give as selflessly as was modeled unto me; my skin tingles and crawls at the intersection of hope and hopelessness; I weep at my own perceived helplessness.

Breaking Bread

As I scoop fluffy white flour from the 1950's-era canister on my countertop, the white powder dusting my sleeve cuff, my mind travels to the fields adjacent to the farmhouse where my grandparents lived for more than fifty years before they recently moved to town.  That tall, yellow house just off the highway and just north of town was the only consistent house in my semi-nomadic childhood.  Some of my earliest memories include sitting on the back stoop in my Osh Kosh overalls while my grandpa brought me a bucket lamb to feed with a baby bottle full of warm milk.  As he placed the little lamb in my lap and lowered his body to sit beside me, Grandpa would slip his arm around my shoulders to help guide the bottle and manage the squirrelly lamb until the soporific milk took affect.  Somehow even then, I think I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Other times I would pile into the front seat of Grandpa's pick up truck with one or two of my sisters and ride up the hill to the pasture while Grandpa leaned out the window yelling things like, "Whoa, there!" and calling all the cows Bessie.

In the evenings, Grandma would invite us to help prepare the meal.  We would do dishes together while she told funny stories of our mom's youth and caught us up on the neighborhood gossip.  She would bathe us and read aloud any of the children's books we'd selected from the low shelf in the hallway.  And always, from the perimeter of my world there, corn grew up from the rich black soil to tuck me in, holding fast in its rootedness while swishing and swaying with the wind.

"Six," I mumble aloud, enumerating the cups of flour I've piled into the large mixing bowl.  I grasp the grainy wooden spoon in my fist and struggle to mix every bit of flour into the dough that slowly increases to more closely resemble the bread it is becoming.  I scatter one last scoop of flour on the countertop, patting it flat as the landscape of my Kansas childhood, a patchwork of bowing sunflowers and amber waves of wheat.  Glancing across the counter, I half expect to see a child's eyes peering across the surface as I once sat at eye-level across the kitchen table mesmerized by my mom's weathered hands kneading bread dough and making sense out of chaos.  When the eight minutes required to knead a batch of sourdough bread stretched long, I flipped over her giant white mixing bowl, imagining its great domed expanse as the unending sky over our prairie plains as miniscule models of ourselves wandered the surface.  More than any Sunday School lesson she taught or Bible verse I memorized, my mom's all-powerful guiding hands demonstrated the personality of her beloved God.


Two months ago I went to Palestine for three weeks.  The starter I inherited prefers to be used and fed every two weeks to maximize its effectiveness.  When I returned to Minneapolis after three weeks' vacation eating unleavened bread I thrust myself into the busyness of everyday life without making time to heap mountains of flour upon itself, knead it into something sensible, or allow dough to rest and rise eight hours before baking.  Finally, a couple weeks ago, I pulled my starter from the back of the fridge and attempted to make some bread without high hopes.  Indeed, my Italian Herb Bread made with herbs fresh from my school's community garden fell flat.  A week later I tried again with the now-recently-fed starter.  Again, dense doughy bread resulted. I lugged the starter to work with me, made a batch of pizza crust with a couple students, contemplated the pain of parting with this legacy then decided as much as it saddens me to throw out an integral part of my heritage, an overflowing jar of bubbling goo sitting at the back of my refrigerator serves no purpose but to irritate my roommates.  On the way into the house that afternoon, I put the starter in the garbage can by the alley.

Who am I??

I recently received a surprise package in the mail - a free sample of Infant Formula.  Apparently Similac thinks I'm a new mother.

A couple days later, the Social Security Administration sent me a statement informing me of my retirement eligibility.  Apparently the government thinks I'm the age of my mother.

Steering my bicycle around the secluded corner by Minnehaha Creek after reviewing my potential pension, I laughed at this postal coincidence.  As my small chuckle subsided and I cruised down the hill toward the parkway, I began to wonder: if I'm not one or the other, and I'm not even somewhere in-between, who am I, really?  Obviously I cannot trust others to answer this question for me: they'll surely err on the mother / pensioner side of things.

I spent the next two hours pedaling, hitting that blissful meditative state in which I feel I could ride forever. In this tunnel-like experience, one identifier shone as clearly as the sole source of light at the end: I am a cyclist.

Maybe I'm not a cyclist in the truest sense of the word, but whoever I am and wherever I'm going, at least I know how I'll travel in the interim: by two wheels.

Lost

At one o'clock yesterday morning, I sat bolt upright in bed, feeling completely satiated of sleep after only three hours, bewildered about my location.  Indeed, it took several moments for me to gather my global whereabouts.  Even when I arrived at the conclusion, "I am in my bedroom in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA," I did not feel reassured to find myself at home. I did not feel at home.

I tossed and turned; I got up and warmed a pita to eat with leftover Baba Ganoush. I read poetry that all seemed flippant and fleeting. I wondered at the question, "If you don't know who you are, how will you know where you're going?" and my instantaneous answer, while still in Palestine, "I am Minnesotan."  Since returning to Minnesota, however, I haven't felt at home, nor the strong desire to make this my home which has driven my life until this point.  I spend my unoccupied time daydreaming about future trips.  I spend my should-be occupied time doing the same.

Chile, Hawaii, British Colombia, Mexico City.  These all call my name.  The house in Minneapolis that I've wanted for so long seems to have fallen silent.

I feel like that little kid I saw lost at the airport the day I arrived home - here. Dumbfounded at the sudden absence of everything and everyone familiar, spinning in circles hoping to catch some hint as to my future direction, my next move and yet unable to move my feet or cry out for help.

Like that little boy, my eyes will soon be bloodshot red if I keep up these no-sleep sleep habits.  To a full night's sleep!