This morning the sky is cloudy, and the winds are strong enough to blow through the bathroom wall and cool my toes as I wash my hands at the sink. This morning is Monday morning. It is the first Monday morning in September. With the rush of the autumn winds returning, I can feel the breath returning to my lungs and the huge weight of August lifting off of my creativity. For the first time in weeks I feel alive - tired, tentative, tender, fragile, but alive. Sentence structure has become interesting again. Independent thought has become normal again. Hard work is beginning to look possible, interesting, maybe even inspiring. My heart swells with love for the autumn.
I'm not entirely sure when August first became such an anathema to me. As a child I hated the hot and humid weather of August in the DC Metro area. I marvelled at the fact I could become soaked in sweat while sitting still. Sometimes we moved my bed downstairs at night so I could benefit from the A/C that was for the ground floor only. Other nights I would lie spread-eagled on the bed with no pillow, no blanket, no covering of any kind, striving to have as little sticky contact as possible.
When I left home for Bluefield, 'Virginia's tallest town', I discovered a different kind of summer. The kind of heat I grew up with never came to those cool, high, Appalachian hills. The first August I spent back in the heat and humidity of my childhood saw the first great painful tragedy of my young life. Although that was nine years ago, and I have now recovered from that trauma, I have greatly disliked the month of August ever since. It always seems like oppressive space. Summer stalls and autumn hasn't started yet. Society seems to be holding its collective breath before the plunge of another academic year, and in the pause, I suffocate.
This year I did it properly. I choked, lost perspective and nearly gave up trying to make any independent life for myself. The dark gulf of despair loomed, casting its shadow across me for days at a time.
There are several things which have happened over the last few days that have contributed to the change in my outlook on life. The weeks of August, low, difficult and painful as they were, provided space for reflection and time to form a different outlook on life. So the foundation for a fresh start was in the difficult days of August, as perhaps it often is, but it takes the fresh, stiff breezes of September to make the fresh start possible. Not for me the inspiration of the delicate days of spring time. Each year new life comes to me with the dying leaves of autumn.
05 September, 2011
02 September, 2011
Beautiful Friendship
Last night I used the Skype app on my iPod to make a phone call to my best friend back in the US. She's been my 'best friend' since childhood. In actually fact, aside from family, she actually qualifies as the only true friend from my childhood. Anyone else I spent time with or considered a 'friend' as a child has long since become no more than a name on a facebook page that is never active, but for some reason, this one friend has lasted through all the difficult years of the teens and twenties. Now we are both married and 30 years old, our friendship has been stretched by miles and tested by grief, but it has always held.
As children we became friends because of proximity - she lived next door to my grandparents. When I went to visit them, 850 miles from home at a house in the country, it was only natural that I play with the girl next door who was just my age. In fact, I don't remember the day we met. She was just always a part of a visit to my grandparents. She has always been my friend.
But every time I hang up the phone, I am left wondering again why our friendship became so solid. I marvel at the good it does me to spend that hour or two on the phone talking about everything and nothing. The way her children interrupt with funny questions and observations on life, and in the same conversation we discuss grief, cooking, church, theology and arachnids.
At twenty, she was married. At twenty-one, my wedding was cancelled. She moved 500 miles from home and started a family. I studied for 10 years and moved across an ocean. I was a town girl. She was a country girl. Sometimes it seems a wonder to me that we have anything in common at all!
Yet, as the years go by, she retains the title of 'my best friend' simply because there doesn't seem to be a better way to refer to a friend who has cried with you, laughed with you, shared griefs with you, told you your faults, given and received advice and help, and always sounds glad to hear your voice on the other end of the phone. Perhaps there is something in the very difference between us that makes the friendship work. Every time one of our conversations end, I put down the iPod with a different attitude, a fresh perspective. She gives me a window into a world different from mine. The effect is both refreshing and affirming. There are things about her life that I would emulate, and things about my life that I like more in contrast to hers. I hope the feeling is mutual.
As children we became friends because of proximity - she lived next door to my grandparents. When I went to visit them, 850 miles from home at a house in the country, it was only natural that I play with the girl next door who was just my age. In fact, I don't remember the day we met. She was just always a part of a visit to my grandparents. She has always been my friend.
But every time I hang up the phone, I am left wondering again why our friendship became so solid. I marvel at the good it does me to spend that hour or two on the phone talking about everything and nothing. The way her children interrupt with funny questions and observations on life, and in the same conversation we discuss grief, cooking, church, theology and arachnids.
At twenty, she was married. At twenty-one, my wedding was cancelled. She moved 500 miles from home and started a family. I studied for 10 years and moved across an ocean. I was a town girl. She was a country girl. Sometimes it seems a wonder to me that we have anything in common at all!
Yet, as the years go by, she retains the title of 'my best friend' simply because there doesn't seem to be a better way to refer to a friend who has cried with you, laughed with you, shared griefs with you, told you your faults, given and received advice and help, and always sounds glad to hear your voice on the other end of the phone. Perhaps there is something in the very difference between us that makes the friendship work. Every time one of our conversations end, I put down the iPod with a different attitude, a fresh perspective. She gives me a window into a world different from mine. The effect is both refreshing and affirming. There are things about her life that I would emulate, and things about my life that I like more in contrast to hers. I hope the feeling is mutual.
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