Lately, when I catch a glimpse of my face it appears to be melting like candle wax or colorful taffy in the hot Florida sun. It evokes the hollow horror of Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” Since I haven’t taken any LSD, I figure this droop must be part of aging. I spoke with my doctor about the way my origami shaped eyelids are folding in on themselves, and she said that she thinks I could qualify for the medically-necessary surgery to put them back in their proper place so my vision isn’t impaired. I didn’t know whether to feel validated by her comment or virtually hopeless.
Earlier that day I was speaking with a friend who is teaching a class on the Book of Ecclesiastes and he mentioned its humanistic view of vanity which goes beyond society’s obsession with appearances. The only thing I knew offhand about the chapter is the passage that begins “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens,” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
It reads like beautiful poetry, a cadence of simplicity making sense of a senseless world: “a time to be born and time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,” (Ecclesiastes 3: 2-3). A time to be young and cute with body parts in their proper spot and a time to have your eyelids tied up with thread so you can see every new crevice of decay. Somehow that line must have been edited out. I suppose for the sake of brevity, not lack of validity. Read more
It’s the Fall of my son’s senior year in high school. The seeds we planted in the blind enthusiasm of grade school, protected from the ambivalence of middle school, and fertilized with a hearty mix of encouragement and extracurriculars through the high school years have culminated into a small crop of college applications, deadlines, and gut-wrenching decisions. Our mailbox is jammed with colorful college brochures, inviting postcards, and glossy magazines that clearly explain the absurd-cost of college. For months, we’ve binged on the propaganda. We’ve made our list. We’ve pared down our list. We’ve reevaluated and we’ve changed it – sometimes all in one day. At times, motivations and decisions seemed logical, and, just as often, the experience has felt more like a diagnosis of insanity than a direction to begin anew.
When my son was seven years old, he was trying to balance. One minute he was excitedly saying, “Look, mom, I found the spot!” Moments later, mid-wobble, he said, “Oh, wait. I lost the spot.” Of course, it was losing it I related too.
I never understood the advice on public speaking about imagining your audience in their underwear. Maybe it’s because I don’t multitask well but I can’t imagine talking about God’s mercy while also trying to focus on an array of undergarments. Besides, it’s just creepy. While the intent may be to make the speaker more comfortable, I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable than a room full of people wearing only bras and briefs.
Virginia Slims cigarettes used to have an empowering ad campaign directed at women, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” If we ladies had come a little farther they would have left off “baby,” but it was the seventies and that’s as far as we had come: an anorexic cigarette, marketed specifically to our gender, empowering us to “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.” (That was another ad campaign for Enjoli perfume).
I am not sure how it started. I think there was a picture frame hanging on the wall that I thought was too small. In an attempt to fix it, I moved every single piece of furniture in my living room and adjacent dining room. Even though I feign weakness when there is something to lift that weighs more than three pounds, if there is furniture I want to move and no one is around to help, I become the unknown twin sister of the Incredible Hulk. Of course, it’s not pretty to turn the color of the jolly green giant but to be able to move ginormous slabs of wood around the room, one has to sacrifice vanity for vein-popping strength.
The color black is symbolic of funerals, representing everything from the heavy grief that overshadows the bereaved to the most common color-choice for attire. How strange then that the decision on whether to attend a funeral isn’t always as clear as the delineation between black and white. Many people fall into a gray area of not knowing the deceased well, but still wanting to support the grieving. It can feel like an awkward palette from which to draw — blending the darkness of death with the comfort of light.
I was talking to Jesus one night before bed and told him that his will for my life appears fairly willy-nilly. What are we really doing here, God? This? That? Does it even matter? It’s as if he thinks I can read the signs he sends. I can’t even read a map much less fold one, so why he thinks I can discern his will is a mystery to me. Still, I come back to that longing to know. It’s like a kid the night before their birthday trying to figure out what their gifts will be. It’s a sleepless mix of exhilaration and anticipation and longing for the relief of just knowing. What a gift the knowing would be.
I was doing my teenage Uber driving duties and thinking about the advice that encourages parents to talk to children in the car. After all, they are a captive audience, don’t have to make eye contact (because God forbid, we have any of that), and both parent and child are physically restrained –that might not have been among the reasons listed but it does seem worth noting. We were on the return portion of our journey into silence and I was lamenting the misery of it when I looked out the car window and saw a man sitting on a bus stop talking to himself. Our eyes met and for a moment he silenced.
Growing up, I was never in the talent show. It wasn’t even a consideration. I could barely pass math, so the notion of talent seemingly passed me by. Life felt too narrow to think of talent as anything other than singing, dancing, or playing a musical instrument – none of which I could do.