More Gentle and More Beautiful

As a kid, I wasn’t afraid of much, but I was scared of what was beneath the surface of lakes, oceans, seas, gulfs or streams. Any natural water source that was too deep for me to see the bottom of terrified me.

Our hearts are like those lakes, oceans, seas, gulfs and streams sometimes in that there is a darkness within them. There is a black, broken place inside even the kindest of hearts.

When I was 15, I went SCUBA diving in the ocean off the coast of Mexico. I was surprised that the bottom of the ocean at that particular spot wasn’t dark at all. In fact, it was beautiful and colorful and filled with amazing textures and patterns. Tonight I’m reminded of the bottom of the ocean, and suddenly the depths of my own heart aren’t so intimidating.

As much as I loved the compexities of Brooklyn, I’m thankful for the introspection, faith and courage I’ve found in Missouri. The depths of our fears are far more gentle and beautiful than we can imagine.

I challenge you to dive into your own.

Thankful for One More Day

The morning sun was at my back as I drove North on Highway 8. I was hovering just below the speed limit as I approached the Potosi city limits.

There is no turning lane on the highway in that spot, so when I saw a car passing the pick-up, I realized that the truck was in my lane. I slammed on my brakes, gripping the steering wheel with my left hand and throwing my right hand to my horn.

The grey and black Ford F-150 looked like a wall of steel standing before me as I braced for impact.

The left front end of his truck struck my front driver’s side. His truck scraped down the side of my car, and I watched the shoulder of the road move all too quickly beneath my tires.

I felt my car leave the road, then the shoulder of the road, and finally come to a stop nose-down in a six-foot ditch.

I put the car in park. By the time I got out and turned to look at the scene of the accident, the truck’s driver was already halfway between his truck and my car, asking me if I was alright, and

apologizing.

Adrenaline pumping, my hands began to shake. Soon my arms and shoulders began to shiver and shake, too.

By the time the police reports were written, the car was on a tow truck and I had arrived at the auto shop, I was sick to my stomach and exhausted.

My dad helped me with the phone calls and paperwork for insurance and a rental car, and then I worked a 7 hour day, leaving the office well after 9 p.m.

I slept for 12 hours last night though, and spent today with a sadness in my stomach that I can’t explain.

The sadness was there yesterday as well. I wished someone would hug me so that I could let the tears flow. Instead, I worked. Today I cleaned and unpacked more boxes, and only now, after midnight, in my bed alone, are a few tears falling.

I wasn’t afraid. As I braced for impact, I felt at peace with whatever was about to happen.

What a strange thing – to be aware of that sense of peace even as a Ford truck is pummeling the car you’re driving. I think I resigned myself in that moment that I was prepared for whatever hand God was dealing me.

I was a blessed woman to have landed in the cozy 6-foot ditch that I landed in (rather than in any number of 50+ foot drop-offs along that highway), and while I was at peace with whatever was going to happen, I am so, so thankful that I was given another day to wake up and live today.

Smalltowngirl

Taken 3/14/09 in Potosi, MO

A Bald Eagle, a Beautiful Sunrise, and a Shotgun

On Friday evening, I sat with several coworkers in the dining hall, waiting for the board retreat events to begin. On the menu were fried fish, hush puppies, a salad bar, and desert.

The dining hall looks out onto a 360-acre spring fed lake, and as we ate, a gigantic bird flew past the windows 40 feet or so above the water. My colleague, Andy, pointed it out to us, saying that what had just flown by was “our” bald eagle.

Bald Eagles:

MO=1; NY=0

***

Because board retreat activities were going fairly late Friday night, I stayed at the Lodge. I woke up the next morning to this view outside my room:

Beautiful sunrises over lakes:

Mo=1; NY=0

***

On Saturday afternoon, the board was invited to participate in a trap and skeet range orientation. Since I’ve been trying to do as many of the activities at work as I can, I decided to tag along.

I grew up around guns, but I had never taken gun safety, and had never shot a shotgun. During the hourlong gun safety course we took, I learned about the parts of the gun, the rules of responsible gun handling, and the meanings of some common firearm jargon.

Watching the instructor (who also happens to be one of my bosses) handle the three shotguns (none loaded) that were part of the safety course, I had butterflies in my stomach.

I haven’t been around guns in a long time, and my liberal-leaning New-Yorker-self was starting to question whether I really wanted to handle one.

I stayed back, watching the board members and their families try their hands with shooting trap. Finally, though, all of the other people had taken their turn, and a few people turned to me, expectantly. I looked around, realizing that I was the only person left to shoot, and stood up to try shooting the 20-gauge shotgun.

The kick on the 20-gauge wasn’t as bad as I’d expected it to be, but the gun itself was a lot heavier than I was prepared for. My left arm, on which most of the weight of the gun was resting, was almost shaking after five shots, and it’s still a little sore today.

I guess I was proud of myself for trying something that scared me. I would have been perfectly comfortable never having that shtogun in my hands, but I didn’t let myself stay scared.

I missed every one of the five clays I was shooting at, but I learned new things and overcame what I hadn’t even recognized before then was a fear of mine in handling firearms.

Firearms aren’t a subject for light-hearted conversation, so I’m not giving this experience points in my tongue-and-cheek MO vs. NY battle.

***

I will, however, chalk one up for the trails outside the office. After finishing up at the trap and skeet range, I took a jog on the trails, and left work to head home for the rest of the weekend.

Trails outside the office:

MO = 1; NY = 0

Twenty Four Hours

I gripped the rungs of the ladder, excited. Kids laughed and hollared and water splashed in the pool beneath me as I placed my foot on the first cool, metal rung.

Quickly, I ascended, afraid to look down. The top of the ladder came quickly, and as my eyes became level with the diving board, I realized for the first time exactly how high in the air I was.

What would happen if, at the top, you froze and couldn’t get yourself down? Would they call in the fire department like the do when a cat gets stuck in a tree?

All of time stood still for a moment. Butterfiles rose up in my stomach, and fear trickled slowly from my core, into my arms and legs, and on to my fingers and toes.

It was quiet from the top. A place of relative solitude. The kids down below looked small, and even the lifeguards – in their towers of authority – were beneath me.

I was on my own, and while I wanted to feel the rush of the dive, I was terrified to actually jump from the diving board now that I was standing on it.

Whether it was fear of humiliation, the uncertainty of what would happen if I simply sat on the diving board and refused to come down, or my innate sense of courage and adventure, I’m not sure.

I walked to the edge though. I took a deep breath, and I jumped, a scream of terror and delight escaping my lips as my body hung in the air and began plummeting down.

When I crashed into the water and made my way back up for air, I couldn’t imagine not having had the courage to make that leap.

***

“How are you feeling about the move?”

With twenty-four hours left, maybe this helps answer that question.

***

Too Many Tears for Chinese New Year

I sat with Jeff on a park bench in Chinatown watching teenagers in t-shirts toss a football to one another. It was nearly fifty degrees today after weeks of temperatures that hovered around zero, so warm sunshine and the lunar new year brought a sense of lightness to the park around us.

My hope when he invited me to come with him to Chinatown today was that we’d find our shared space again – the space where “he” and “I” are “us”.

We talked quietly about what lead us to break up; how I wouldn’t have applied for a job out of state if I’d known he saw a

future with me, and how me applying for a job out of state was the beginning of him falling out of love with me.

In seven months, he’d never spoken the words, “I love you” to me. Today he spoke them twice, and while it was good to hear him verbalize his feelings for me, it wasn’t romantic or special the way it should be when those words are spoken to someone for the first time.

I watched a lanky Asian boy gracefully catch the football his friend threw.

Instead of sharing the words, “I love you” with a sense of excitement or aniticpation, I heard them from Jeff for the first time with a football landing in a teenager’s hands, and a vacuum-like sense of emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

The words, “I love you” weren’t followed by a kiss or a hug. They were followed with a request that we be “friends.”

“I don’t want you to be my ex-anything,” he said to me. “I don’t think of you as my ex-girlfriend. I think of you as my friend.”

Kids laughed and an old man shuffled by in clunky black tennis shoes.

A hawk flew down from the sky and clutched a mouse from the sidewalk between its talons. As quickly as it landed, it flew away again. I’d never seen anything quite like that – such a breathtakingly graceful gesture, but one that ended in the death of a living thing.

I’d never felt anything quite like what I was feeling then, in the park, when Jeff finally admitted that he loved me, but followed it with a request that we be friends, either.

Some things just aren’t built into our natural, biological, or intuitive sense of understanding. Hearing “I love you” followed by “I want to be friends” is one of them.

“I want to be your friend, but I’m not even sure how to do that,” I told him.

I’d have my opportunity to learn how to do that a short time later as we entered a party thrown by his coworker, Ed, who promply introduced me to someone else as Jeff’s girlfriend.

I was proud of myself for smiling, not crying, and making small talk with the people there. I was proud of myself for doing everything in my power to be Jeff’s “friend” when so deep inside my heart, I feel pulled to be the girl he loves and holds and takes care of  - not the girl he’s friends with.

“This is my friend, Melissa,” he would say to people as he introduced me.

I am his friend, Melissa. I would think to myself, rehearsing this new role that I’ve been forced into.

We went to the roof of the building, and I looked out onto the streets of Chinatown. Colorful scraps of paper littered the streets from the parade earlier in the day.

Nearly two weeks after accepting my new job in Missouri, a sense of the scale of that decision hit me firmly in the chest as I stood looking out on Chinatown from that rooftop.

I’m leaving New York, and in deciding to leave, I’m also turning my back on one of the best things that’s happened to me in a very long time; my relationship with Jeff.

The tears started then, as this sense of perspective hit me, and Jeff and I said a quick goodbye. He squeezed me in his arms, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.

I wiped away a few tears there on the roof, but tried to hold my composure until I reached the street outside of Ed’s building, at which point tender sobs grew out of my hurt.

I walked crying through Chinatown, to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I cried as I walked across it into downtown Brooklyn.

Through Brooklyn Heights and into Fort Greene I cried.

I cried as I walked through Fort Greene Park, down Dekalb Avenue, and onto South Oxford Street, where I sat for a few minutes on the stoop of our brownstone, taking it all in, and letting a few more tears stream down.

That was hours ago, but tears are sliding down my cheeks again now as I write this, in my pajamas, in my little bedroom in my shared apartment in Brooklyn – a place I can’t call home much longer.

I’m not his girlfriend anymore, and soon I won’t be a New Yorker anymore either. I pray that this decision I’ve made is the right one.

These are the People in My Neighborhood

Welcome to Fort Green, Brooklyn. This is a beautiful neighborhood of four-story brownstone buildings, independent markets, restaurants, cafes, and one of New York City’s oldest parks.

The skeletons in the closet of this rapidly gentrifying community’s not so distant past include drugs, gangs, and violence. It seems that some of those skeletons are out of the closet again, both figuratively and literally.

Not too long ago, a deconstructed human body was found on the street across from the park. The body, wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a cardboard box, appeared to have been put out for the Department of Sanitation to pick up with the trash.

I understand that it was the liquid seeping from the box that drew passersby to report the box to the authorities. I was shaken up, not only by the crime, but by it’s proximity to my own apartment; less than one block.

Only a few days later, a man walked into a barber shop in Fort Green and open fired. I’ve willed myself to forget what the casualties were. This incident was a few blocks further than the first from my apartment.

Last night, another human body was found wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a cardboard box on the same street as before, across from the park, less than one block from where I live.

Thinking about these crimes, I hear the old song from Sesame Street, “These are the people in  your neighborhood” play in my mind, with a Tom Waits-style creaking, screaching, eerly, spooky accompaniment.

It’s hard to imagine who the person is in my neighborhood that would do this.

People in Your Neighborhood

Written by Jeffrey Moss

(Lyrics taken from: http://members.tripod.com/Tiny_dancer/ssalbums.html)

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day

Oh, the postman always brings the mail
Through rain or snow or sleet or hail
I’ll work and work the whole day through
To get your letters safe to you

‘Cause a postman is a person in your neighborhood
In your neighborhood
He’s in your neighborhood
A postman is a person in your neighborhood
A person that you meet each day

Oh, a fireman is brave it’s said
His engine is a shiny red
If there’s a fire anywhere about
Well, I’ll be sure to put it out

‘Cause a fireman is a person in your neighborhood
In your neighborhood
He’s in your neighborhood

And a postman is a person in your neighborhood

Well, they’re the people that you meet
When you’re walking down the street
They’re the people that you meet each day

The baker is the one who makes
Your bread and rolls and pies and cakes
If you want something sweet to eat, go see
The baker in the bakery

A teacher works the whole day through
To teach important things to you
He’ll teach you things you won’t forget
Like numbers and the alphabet

A barber has a great big chair
You sit in it, he cuts your hair
He’ll snip and clip and never rest
Until your haircut looks its best

The bus driver drives fast or slow
To take you where you want to go
When you get in and pay your fare
She will drive you anywhere

A dentist cares for all your teeth
The top ones and the ones beneath
So if you have an aching tooth
He’ll fix it quick, and that’s the truth

The doctor makes you well real quick
If by chance you’re feeling sick
She works and works the whole day long
To help you feel well and strong

The grocer sells the things you eat
Like bread and eggs, cheese and meat
No matter what you’re looking for
You’ll find it at the grocery store

The shoemaker is always there
To take care of the shoes you wear
With his hammer, nails, and glue
He’ll fix your shoes as good as new

The cleaner is the one who knows
How to clean and press your clothes
He’ll take a jacket, suit, or vest
And clean it so you’ll look your best

The trash collector works each day
He’ll always take your trash away
He drives the biggest truck you’ve seen
To keep the city streets all clean

Breaking Things to Fix Them

We began talking. I apologized for snapping at you during brunch. You accepted my apology. Things seemed okay, but I had a lot on my mind. We were sitting on the white couch, and you reached out for me. I needed to talk, not to be held. Even now, when you aren’t here to hold me, I don’t regret that decision.

An hour later, I took your keys off my keychain and set them quietly on your book shelf. You walked out of the apartment as I started to gather the things of mine that had gradually accumulated in your space. I wanted to slip as gently and quietly as I could out your front door, and I wanted the hurt to stop hurting. I didn’t want to leave any traces of myself behind to haunt you.

I thought that maybe you were leaving – that you would take a walk and I’d be gone when you came back. A moment later the door creaked open, and you appeared with two sturdy shopping bags. It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realized you’d taken them from the stack someone in your building had left in your entryway. I packed my things.

I said to you what I wanted to say. You were standing next to the radiator. You looked like someone had crushed you when I said what I did. I guess that it really wasn’t until that moment that you realized how I felt about you. You had already made your decision though, and I needed to go.

You put my bags in the backseat of the cab, and then you wrapped your arms around me. I can still smell the leather of your coat. I could not hug you back. The heaving sobs rose from deep inside me – from caverns of emotions that I thought would be foverever closed. You had opened them up, and now they echoed my heartbreak.

I sat in the cab and watched you walk down the sidewalk defeated, shoulders slumped and arms hanging low. I thought to myself, “I love you,” and I asked the driver through choked sobs, “why do men do this?” even though I knew that man didn’t do this.

I had prayed for two weeks that our future would be made clear to me. Saturday night we laughed and teased and watched movies, and we fell asleep happy. The next day, I watched those words come out of your mouth, and I heard the tone in  your voice. I think that you were as surprised to hear yourself say those words as I was.

I feel as if someone has punched me in the heart. Looking back at my life, though, I have never had a bruise that didn’t heal. And the healing that you offered my heart, Jeff, far exceeds the hurt that you’ve left in it. Thank you for that.