Poetry Friday: Morning

Last week I wrote that I was adding a poetry book to my wish list. Yesterday the book arrived in the mail, purchased by a friend and reader. Wow! What a nice surprise! So far I am enjoying the book very much and I will post a review soon, perhaps for next week's Poetry Friday.

For today, in my new-found boldness, I am once again sharing an original poem.



Morning

I woke from a dream of him
to find myself alone in bed.

How banal is that?
How many women have done the same,
from how many dreams
of how many hims?

Maybe he was fighting a war (Iraq, Civil, Trojan)
Maybe he was with someone else
Maybe he didn't exist at all except in that dream
Maybe he was crushed under rubble when the house collapsed in an earthquake

And how many beds?

Beds big and small, comfortable and lumpy
Penelope's (the one Odysseus made out of a tree)
Beds in dorm rooms and apartments and lonely houses
Or on the hard ground, a mat shared with four children in a tent city in Port-au-Prince

I woke from a dream of him
to find myself alone in bed

What a platitude,
and how foolish to write a poem
about that moment
when I looked for him among the sheets,
that brief panic before I remembered.
And then the sadness.

Except that this time
it was my dream
and my bed.

by Ruth from www.thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Waving Goodbye

This melancholy poem from the Writer's Almanac is perfect for today, as my husband flies back to Haiti.

Waving Goodbye
by Wesley McNair

Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me.

Here's the rest of it.

Poem in Your Pocket

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. At that link you can even find some pocket-size poems to print out, should you need one.

On the iPod

This morning while I walked I listened to this program. (Here's a post about some of my other favorite episodes of Speaking of Faith.) It's an interesting discussion of the dichotomy in American culture between practical experience and "book learning" and the way vocational and non-college-bound students can be marginalized in school. Mike Rose, the interviewee, has reflected deeply on the intelligence required for manual labor, and he talks about his mother, who was a waitress and considered that extremely meaningful work. I found this fascinating as a teacher and as a former waitress. I wasn't good at it, like Mike Rose's mother was, but the experience made me a proponent of generous tipping.

Visit

I feel as though I owe you, my readers, a report about my husband's visit. I'm not sure why I feel that way, but somehow I do.

It was wonderful.

It was a time like nothing that we've ever had before and I doubt we'll have anything like it again: a whole week with nothing to do except hang out and enjoy each other's company. The children were in school during the day (except one day when we took them out and went hiking - I posted some photos here), but we had time with them in the afternoons and evenings and on the weekend. When we were with the kids, I felt as though I could breathe and relax: someone was sharing the job of parenting with me. What a privilege. I thought often of those from whom the earthquake took a spouse, for whom those moments of sharing parenting with the person who made the babies with them will never come again. From now on, I won't take that for granted. It was wonderful, too, to see how happy the children were to have their dad here.

The week felt holy - holy in the sense of set apart, outside of common everyday life, and also holy in the sense of sacred, numinous. It felt like the most amazing, generous gift of God.

It was like our honeymoon - except that we know each other so much better now. It was like the early weeks of our babies' lives - except that, unlike then, we weren't sleep-deprived and we didn't have tiny people to take care of. But it was like those times in the sense of closeness we felt to each other, and in the intensity of our focus on what matters in life.

There were sad moments, too. That's how it is in our lives now. Every joy is tinged with pain, with remembering those who died, and the difficult times that everyone has gone through. When my husband first arrived, I couldn't stop crying for several hours. My son asked me why I was crying when I was supposed to be happy. I told him that sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. But somehow that sadness dissolved into hilarity and laughter, times with family and friends, moments of relishing everyone and everything that God has given us. The boundaries between happy and sad are more fluid now.

A friend told me today that I am very fortunate in my relationship with my husband. I responded that I know I am. I know it now more than ever. What I don't know is why I am so blessed: why I married someone who turned out to be exactly as wonderful as he seemed before the wedding, why we have fulfilling work and healthy children, why we survived an earthquake in which so many died. Why me? Why us?

So as we said goodbye, and as I cried (crying: it's what I do), I was filled with gratitude. We grieve, yes, but we are blessed beyond description. And the greatest blessing is that we know now (rather than years from now, in retrospect) how blessed we are. And even in the face of all the uncertainties ahead, for our family and for Haiti, we will have the memory of our week together.

Messages from God

Jon at Stuff Christians Like has a funny post today about making Christian references to the Icelandic volcano. (That's what I call it - "the Icelandic volcano." I certainly can't pronounce its name.)

Fifteen weeks ago I was in a large, apocalyptic natural disaster. It has been fascinating to me to hear the messages from God that various people have discerned in this event. Some of them have been painful to hear or read about. God's punishment? God's way of getting the world to pay attention to Haiti? God's way of speeding up adoptions?

I don't know what was in God's mind on January 12th. I don't know if He was sending us messages. I know I have learned a huge amount since that day, about myself, about the world, about my marriage and my family and my friendships. I believe that my life is a gift from God. But are all those things messages from God, messages He sent through the earthquake?

I don't know what the meaning was. I don't think I ever will.

Do the recent earthquakes, and now the volcano, mean that the world is about to end, that justice and mercy are about to take over, that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, that God will make all things new? I sure would love that. But that's what everyone thought after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 and Lisbon earthquake in 1755, and the destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD. We're still here, staggering along, trying to figure things out day by day.

Here's what the book of Hebrews says about messages from God:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

There's a message I can understand. It's a message of love and of redemption. It's a message of hope. Holding on to the Son, I can go on.

Happy Anniversary to Me

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, and my Poetry Friday post honors him. But it is also the birthday of my blog. As of today, I have been blogging for four years. Thank you to my readers, whether you read faithfully or just drop by from time to time.

Who I Am

A friend sent me this NPR story about a new book of poetry for adolescents. Looks intriguing - I think it is going on my wish list.

Poetry Friday: Shakespeare's Birthday

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, so in his honor I am posting one of his sonnets. There are so many wonderful ones to choose from, but I chose this one because it talks about what really matters: others may have greater reasons to boast than I do, but I rejoice that I "love and am beloved."


XXV

Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
Then happy I, that love and am beloved,
Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

A Long Way from Haiti

Yesterday, fourteen weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, we took our kids out of school and had a family day to celebrate their dad's visit. We felt a long way from home as we hiked through the beautiful wildflowers of a nature preserve.

Excuse Me for a Moment

My husband is visiting, so apart from a couple of posts I've already written and scheduled, I don't think I'll be around much in the next few days. See you later!

Thoughts from Limbo

The thoughts of another displaced family from Haiti.

Art Tatum

My son has been reading and enjoying the book Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum, by Robert Andrew Parker. Tatum was born with bad eyesight and taught himself to play the piano. The book includes some beautiful descriptions of music. And by the magic of YouTube, we were able to find a video of Art Tatum playing Dvorak's Humoresque, just like in the book.

Husband

I got a haircut this morning, and the ladies in the beauty shop were talking about their husbands. I didn't say anything, just listened and smiled. I thought about Garrison Keillor's riffs about the hairdressers being the high priestesses of a town, full of knowledge about life and men and romance, and yet, knowing all they know, still getting brides ready for their weddings.

I lucked out in the husband department. And when I say luck, I don't mean that I believe in randomness. I just mean that I got an excellent husband, and I can't take much credit.

I was eighteen when I met my husband, and while many eighteen-year-olds may be full of wisdom, I wasn't. I was naive and immature, and I was a very long way from home.

What did I know about choosing a life partner? All I knew was that I couldn't get enough of being with him. I liked that he was smart and could talk about books with me, that he took long bicycle trips, that he was an MK, like I was. I found him mysterious, in a way that made him a challenge. I thought he had beautiful blue eyes. He could talk about anything to anyone. He had done all kinds of fascinating jobs and seemed full of experiences in a way the other boys weren't. He took me on gourmet picnics (there was one memorable one where he set some grass on fire with his camping stove), and introduced me to sushi, and he kept a pet snake. He took me on a two hundred mile motorcycle trip, much to my parents' horror. I knew he was open to traveling and living overseas.

I thought my life with him would be an adventure (and I was right). I thought we would always have things to talk about (and we do). He made my heart pound (and he still can). I remember hearing someone say that you should look at the man you wanted to marry and imagine looking at him across the dinner table for the rest of your life. From that perspective, I thought he would do.

But what did I know? I didn't know he would forgive me immediately when I lost his precious leather jacket he had bought in Tokyo. I didn't know how he would buoy me up through the stress of graduate school. I didn't know he would be able to deal with his first case of malaria by saying, proudly, "Just like Graham Greene." I didn't know he would be the most amazing labor coach, supporting me so beautifully as I worked to bring our babies into the world. I didn't know how he would carry those babies in his arms and show them around, or anything at all about what a great dad he would be. I didn't know that I needed someone who could bargain for fruit at roadside stands in Haiti and make all the merchants laugh, or drive in Port-au-Prince and pronounce it "fun," or remain calm through all manner of crises. I didn't know I needed someone who could cope with a catastrophic earthquake.

Like any couple, we have had our share of difficulties. We argue, and hurt each other's feelings, and he leaves his socks on the floor (and I may do a few things he doesn't like, as well). I'm also well aware that now that we have been apart for three months (minus a few days in early February), my missing him is making me focus on the positive.

But all in all, I have to thank God for bringing my husband into my life. God was very kind to me; He knew what I needed even though I didn't.

Now I am staying in the college town where we met, and almost every day I walk past the church where we married. I look back at that very young woman that walked down the aisle and I think about Sara Groves' song, "Different Kinds of Happy."

Better than our promises
is the day we got to keep them
I wish those two could see us now
they never would believe how
there are different kinds of happy

The kind of happy we are in now is something I wouldn't have wished for as I posed for pictures in my wedding dress, clutching flowers. It's a kind of happy that looks like grief, some days. And yet we still have each other. And I call myself very, very lucky.

Poetry Friday: Earthquake Vocabulary

The temptation to post T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is almost irresistible at this time of year, and this year particularly.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Here's the rest of it.

However, I decided to post something far less worth reading, a poem I wrote myself. Since the earthquake in Haiti, I have been surprised by how often references to earthquakes come up in people's ordinary speech and in things I'm reading, including the Bible and The Trumpet of the Swan. A couple of weeks after my children and I were evacuated from Haiti I wrote this:


Earthquake Vocabulary

Here are some words I’d rather you not use metaphorically:
seismic,
Richter scale,
epicenter.

Here are some words I used before but shouldn’t have:
devastating,
catastrophe,
disaster.

Here are some words I used to know:
permanent,
stable,
solid.

Here’s a word I thought I knew but really didn’t:
earthquake.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup. There's a lot of beautiful stuff today - take a look!

Thursday Morning

When I went out to walk this morning, I wore my red Mu Kappa t-shirt. That made me think of Dave Pollock, who died on Easter Sunday six years ago. I have thought of him many times since the earthquake and wished I could talk to him. He was visiting our school on September 11th, 2001, and prayed and counseled with us and our kids. He prayed for me after my miscarriage. He helped me and so many others understand who we are as TCKs and embrace the challenges and opportunities that our lives bring us. I probably only spent a hundred hours with Dave but I loved him and miss him.

As I was walking I thought about Tara's first run after the earthquake. (I think that is the third or fourth time I've linked to that post, but if you haven't read it yet, go read it.) I don't, honestly, think about it every single day now, but often enough.

I listened to Greg Boyd's Easter sermon, "Sehnsucht." (Another one for the "Favorite Sermons" folder.) Sehnsucht is an intense longing that can't be satisfied by this world. If we live a life where every desire is immediately gratified, maybe we can suppress some of the yearnings we have. Boyd encouraged his listeners to let themselves feel those deep longings, and to find the Resurrection.

Speaking of yearning and longing, I thought a lot about my husband while I walked, too. He is hoping to come soon for a visit. Last night we talked on the phone - the first time in a few days I had heard his voice - and tried to make some plans. It's hard, still, for me to think about the future. I always think something will come along to ruin any plans we make. Maybe something will, but it still felt good to talk about him being here for a few days. I miss him so much. This time apart has been a reminder for me of what a source of strength a happy marriage is, and how grateful I am for my husband, for our history together and our love.

I asked him about bringing a few things. One is the bag with our bathing suits in it. I hate to buy a bathing suit, in common with most women my age, I am sure. I already have one that is all right, but in spite of all my suggestions, he couldn't find it while we were talking. The other thing I wish I had brought is some jewelry. I wear very little of it, but I do have some Kenyan bracelets I like a lot and I also asked for my silver Hershey's kiss pendant. Those things are trivial and unnecessary but I have learned that having little touches like that makes me feel like myself. If I ever have to pack an evacuation bag again, I will do a better job. Tomorrow it will be three months since I have set foot in my house in Haiti, and I shudder to think about what it must look like now. My husband told me a month or so ago that he had said to the doctors who were staying with him that week, "My wife must never know how this house looks." I was thinking about my house and my possessions as I walked this morning. They are just things, and yet they are special to me.

So many emotions in the heart of one ordinary middle-aged person walking down the street! I have thought a lot lately of the words from Paul Simon's song "Graceland": "Losing love is like a window in your heart; everybody sees you're blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow." I feel that my losses - and Haiti's losses, which make my own pale - are so visible to everyone, that everyone knows that we are blown apart.

At least "I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland."

Being Here, Being There

I read an article about the Arctic explorer Pen Hadow. He goes on solo expeditions, stretching himself to the limit of what he - or anyone - can endure. Here's part of the interview:

A: Do you miss regular human contact?

PH: My wife and I have found over the years that regular phone calls don’t work for us. One bad conversation is enough to bring us down. It’s better if we keep to our own worlds until the job is done. I’m in such a different mindset, utterly absorbed in putting one foot in front of the other, that most basic desires melt away.

Maybe that's the best way to deal with the separation, just to allow both people to immerse themselves in their separate worlds. Maybe we both just need to be where we are and try to let that be enough.

I started volunteering in my friend's classroom; she teaches Kindergarten. I went through Confidentiality Training where I was told not to snoop on the teacher's desk. The first day one of the little girls yelled out, upon meeting me, "You're pretty!" (This is something my middle schoolers do not say to me.) When I went back for the second time a child rushed up to me and gave me a big hug, yelling, "You came back!"

Today I'm going to go shopping with my sisters-in-law for some spring clothes. When I first got here I never imagined staying until the weather turned warm. It's so silly to buy clothes when I have a closet full at home, but at least anything I buy for this time of year I can take home and wear there. (The same could not be said for the sweaters that people loaned and gave me when I first arrived.)

I'm trying to be here while I'm here. Did I mention it's not easy? (I think I might have.)

And being there? What's that like? I feel as though I have a very limited perspective on that. I scan the photos people post on Facebook and read everyone's blog. I read articles written by journalists who don't love Haiti the way I do, and I wonder about their interpretations. I ask my husband questions in our brief conversations, but then the internet connection in our house goes out or he has to talk to our son about a picture he drew. And it's always time to hang up, so much sooner than I'm ready to.

But I'm not there. I'm here. And here is where I have to be right now.

Neil Gaiman

Last night I had the opportunity to hear Neil Gaiman speak in a videoconference at the local public library. He won the Newbery Medal last year for The Graveyard Book, but that's the only book of his I have read (though a friend has sent me another of his books and I'm planning to read it soon). Most of the people at the talk were clearly fans, and asked great questions about his books and his writing.

Gaiman talked about many things: intellectual freedom, censorship, his love of libraries and reading, his work as a journalist, his ideas about writing. But my very favorite thing he said was about reading to his children.

I love reading to my kids, and I love reading to my students. Consistently my students talk about my reading aloud as one of their favorite things about my classes. I have posted on this blog about many of the books I have read aloud to my students and my own children. So I completely agreed with Gaiman when he said that reading to his children has provided him with "long-term wonderfulness" and some of the greatest moments of pleasure in his life. He also said that many authors would love to be able to do their own audio books but aren't allowed to by their publishers. He gets to do his own - and even won an award last year for his audiobook of The Graveyard Book. He said the reason he is a good enough reader to do that is that he read to his children for years.

Here's a post I wrote a long time ago about reading aloud to my students.

Edited to add the link to the video of Gaiman's presentation.

Blogging

Before the earthquake, this was a quiet little blog, mostly about what I was reading. Sometimes I wrote about my teaching or posted articles I had seen. I wrote about what it was like to live in my generic third world country, which I didn't identify. I played it safe.

Things have changed. I still try to maintain at least a vestige of anonymity for myself and don't post the names of others unless they have given their permission, but Haiti is no longer unidentified. It's a relief in some ways to write about it, though I am careful to remember that I am a foreigner, not a Haitian. I try not to criticize too much and I avoid politics. While I've lived in Haiti longer than my middle schoolers (having moved there before they were born), I recognize that my experience is not the same as that of a Haitian citizen.

Writing here (and elsewhere) has been hugely therapeutic for me. It feels as though you have some control, when you can shape your thoughts into words and sentences and paragraphs. It's a powerful feeling to be able to put it down where others can read it instead of holding it inside.

For the first time, I have had to apologize to someone whom I offended with my writing. That never used to happen, partly because hardly anyone read it, and partly because I was playing it safe.

How can you play it safe when you live in Haiti? Living in Haiti is about loud music and jokes yelled in Kreyol and color and light and pikliz and garlic. It's about noise and sun and hibiscus in obnoxiously bright pink and red. It's about suffering and endurance and life. It's not a safe place; and when I say that I don't mean it's dangerous, but that it's real. When you live in Haiti you aren't constantly shielded from the truth of how things are. People have criticized me in the past for even living in Haiti at all, and taking my kids there. (One woman said to me, in horror, "You bore your children there? How could you do that to yourself - and to them?") I don't think I have played it safe in my life the way I did in my blog.

I don't know what kind of blogger I'll be when I return home to Haiti. I know I'll blog less than I do here, mostly because I'll have a job to do there. I'll write about teaching again, I'm sure, and that means preserving my students' anonymity as I have always done in the past. But I don't think I can go back to the quiet, safe blogger I used to be any more than I can be the person I was before January 12th. I'm more open now, less filtered. I cry more and love more. I don't know which of the changes will be permanent, but I'm guessing I will never be the same as I was.

Other Voices

Here are some things I'm reading today:

The New York Times has three Op-Eds about the situation now. One of the authors, Evelyne Trouillot, has visited our school and spoken in an assembly to our students.

This article includes a slide show.

Many in Haiti were hoping that President Obama would come to visit them.

“We have received tremendous attention from the international community and President Obama has demonstrated great attention from day one of the disaster,” said Stephanie Jean-Jacques. “I believe Haitians are very grateful to him and his administration, but we are dying to see him come here to see us,” said Jean-Jacques. “We are requesting that of him because we love him,” she said.

Amy Wilentz has been writing about Haiti for a long time and I love the way she turns a phrase. In this article she writes about how Haiti should be rebuilt. I do take exception to this remark:

What is gone, a heart-tugging city of surprising beauty and terrible, ruthless privation, cannot and should not be reinvented. Only sentimental foreigners and perhaps its elderly residents can long mourn the city's demise.

Maybe that just means I'm in the "sentimental foreigner" camp, but while I agree with her that something different needs to be built, I am still in mourning for the "heart-tugging city" that was.

Here's a report by the British Red Cross on the current situation, and here's today's World Vision press release.

And here's a lovely piece by Talie, one of our former students.