And Just Like That

The forecast called for rain today. Thank God, it did not rain. I have to laugh, thinking about that saying, "Thank God!" and what God must think when he hears that casual expression vaulted up to airless space for spaceless reasons, time after time after time.

Today, I thanked God and meant it, for the first time in years, perhaps, for the very real first time. I believe in Him. I believe that He knew.

I've said many prayers over the course of my life, but my prayers were never to God. I would pray to God like he was my ceiling fan, or my door, or the hard wooden pew in front of me. Instead I believe I have been praying this whole time for God. For a God. For any God. But not to God. I have been praying in a small, closed closet for my whole life, sending a prayer up to the wall of myself and pushing it back down to a place of nonbelief. A place of self-worship. A place where faith lived only in my bones, as if I were my own creation, needing nothing else but my own strong self to stand on. So there I stood, upon myself for years, only to push my life to the ground, into the earth, and without a soul that I could recognize as my own. For years, I have lived this way. Alone and godless, my own muse, my own martyr. But I reached a point, a place so flat and so empty, that there was nothing left of me to stand upon. I could no longer stand up. So, relinquishing scornfully, unacceptingly, I stepped down. Or fell down. Laid down, and cried. A lost child. And before me, it just was there. A pen. A piece of paper. In the beginning - I wasn't saving my life, or saving my soul. Hello, it is just a pen. It is just a piece of paper.

But I began to write. Write life off of my soul. Write the pain, the anger, the nothingness I never gave words to. And to my surprise, they thanked me, ever so slowly, by healing me, by lifting me back to the page, day after day. And within each page, a promise: "You are here, inside this blankness. Come to the page and I will help you fill it up." I didn't know why, or how, but those were promises from God, bringing me back to the page, leading me home with a pen. I would sit, blankness before me, and I would fill it up with words that were not my own. It was like, they were words from another place, or another person, and I was just a messenger, just an ordinary medium whose fingers obeyed. Whose heart, for the first time, simply just listened. Still and quiet, I wrote. Wrote those poems about a bartender whose life was a wasted existence, whose God came to her in the form of an old, old woman sitting at her bar. I wrote about my Pretentious Reader, my wine drunk who sits on the outer edge of my writing closet. I wrote about my poem, wincing in pain, rebirthed as a bird, singing invisible rib dust cries, kneeling in prayer and branching anew upon a tree. I wrote about the light and the darkness, about the meaninglessness of so much of what we spend our lives building, how our last exhaled breath is a prayer to be buried into the soil of the cities of our life, filled with all of the people who we love, and people we were too good to love, and children of generations we will never see with our mortal eyes. We pray for them, and I wrote it, and when I wrote it, I didn't know why. I wrote about old Joe, this homeless man who lives inside the painful, shameful part of me who passes by a living human and forgets he is alive. That he has a name. I wrote about kimchi and how it eats me red and raw, burns me so deep with the question - why? I wrote about hymns of spring singing to me as poems through winter glass windows, peering into my life like rare blue light. And in my very first entry, I write about searching for a sober pen. This is no coincidence. These words were no accident. Over and over and over again, for no reason I can explain, these words have appeared past the fingertips of my logic and I can only read back all of these words in a true, new faith and understand that now, for the first time, I know why, and that at the very same time, so humbly I can surrender to knowing that - I have no idea why. It is beyond me to know. It is only for me to love, to open my heart to, to embrace, and, to write.

So today, it did not rain. Today the sun shone so brightly that I was literally blinded. I could do nothing but laugh and cry. Literally, laugh out loud and cry out loud.

The sequence of the day went like this:

Early in the afternoon, I was talking to Lise about carne asada, and how there is this fantastic Mexican grocery store in Chicago that will slice skirt steak thin and tenderize the meat. I choked on the intersection before I could say the street names aloud. California and Belmont. California and Belmont. It is at that intersection that my homeless man, old joe, stands. His chatter-tap boots, his prawny fingernails, his cardboard sign that no one reads. I wrote of him a few months ago. He came to me on a Saturday morning and I literally spent four or five hours learning about him. Seeing him upon my blank computer page and wondering why he was there. Why was he standing there. Why that intersection. California and Belmont. Why was his name old joe. It was a poem where he received such little attention or affection that I could not even capitalize his name. I did not know why. But today, before I could spit out the words to Lise, to tell her of the location of some grocery store, I thought of my shameful, painful place inside where old joe lives and I almost said a prayer for him right there on the spot. But I didn't.

Later in the day, I packed the kids into the car and headed to Rotary Park around 5pm. Joey fell asleep in the car, so I read my blog, thinking about my weekend, and Addy stayed in her seat, quiet and thinking aloud and looking out the window at the park full of children and parents. The day was unseasonably warm, just beautifully sunny. But we stayed in the car to let Joey sleep. When finally I decided to get the kids out, I saw that Addy had had an accident, and we quickly drove home to change her pants. While at home, looking at the clock tick towards 6pm, I entertained just staying inside. But then, the happy thought of kimchi rolled into my head. Usually, the thought of kimchi comes to me when I feel stressed, when I feel angry. Or alone. I need it, my strange comfort food, to fill me up even though after I eat it, much like after I drink alcohol, I feel an inexplicable regret, a undefinable remorse. I do not fully know why, but the feeling meets me at the bottom of the empty bowl. Or at the bottom of the empty glass. Today, however, I felt peace, calm, and a true contentment. Let's pack up, kids, and go the kimchi store! So off we went, and on our way, I drove, sun to my right, and it caught me off-guard. The sun, setting there. I realized how amazing and sort of sad it is that we blame the sun for going away. We say the sun "rises" and "sets" but really, science and art and life has told us that no, the sun is constant. The sun is always there. It is we, the earth, that turns ourselves away from the sun. It is we who bring our own darkness. We do so that the other side of the world may have light. We know this by science but believe it because of faith. Driving, my car planted to the earth by gravity, my flat horizon stretching like a road beyond an endless cliff, I know that we live on a planet round and rotating yet I feel not a celestial movement nor see a bend in the horizon. My heart is open to believing, because how, how can we look at the sun and see it sinking into night even though we know it is we who are rotating into slow darkness. Logic meets force. We know science but feel faith. As I drive, I think - the sun, maybe, is God. I do not know. I just don't know.

So to Little World Market we arrive, a shammy little place with a funky odor and rotting produce. Yes, this is the only place in Springfield, Illinois where I can find kimchi, so over the course of almost 2 years, I have frequented this market at least 20 times or more. And almost always, there is a man, the shelf stocker, there stocking shelves and lumbering through the crowded aisles, looking very much like an oversized hunchback ogre, a towering old man with a worn camel knit skull cap pulled down to colorless eyes hovering above a thick gray mustache, expressing almost nothing within a body held together with a black back brace and covered in a raggedy gray button up shirt and brown pants and thick workman boots. He is there, always, and I avoid him. Not out of fear, but indifference. Today, I saw him, right as I walked into the store, and literally, truly, my first thought was "What if he is God?" Joan Osborne's "What if God was One of Us" sped through my head in silent fast-forward, a passing thought.

He stood there, unstacking boxes. Walking in a line, I led the way, with Joey and Addy following along as we passed behind him.

"Have you ever heard of imprinting?"

I hear him speak. His tone, inviting. His inflection was like that of a friend.

"I, I'm sorry?"

"Imprinting. It's when a baby bird hatches from an egg and whoever it sees first, it thinks is its mother." I immediately think of my birth mother, wondering how long it took my memory to forget her face. To forget that my tiny baby eyes saw her and believed for some short time that she was my mother.

"Oh. Wow, well yes, I have heard of--"

"Have you ever seen that print of the mother duckling and her baby ducklings all crossing the road and a policeman is standing with his hand out to stop traffic?" Skipping to his new thought, I stood there, smiling, thinking and yes, I admit, hoping:"Perhaps he is God."

"You know what?" I say. "Actually, I know what print you're talking about. It's from a book called 'Make Way for Ducklings.' We've read that book, right Addy?" She nods her head. I can see that she is intrigued by him.

"Oh yeah?" he says, bending his eyes toward her and sounding genuinely interested. Pausing, he skips ahead again, looking up. "Have you heard, there's this hotel in Kentucky, or maybe, Tennessee, where these ducklings wandered in, and they just live there, at this hotel. The people at the hotel, just, adopted them. Fed them and took care of them." He breaks into an awkward smile. "And they stay there, rent free!"

I cling to only one of his words. He said "adopted." What? Why did he use this word? Why is he referring out of the clear blue day to imprinting, a thought that invokes such a strong visualization of my birth mother, and a drawing from a book I've read to Addy many times over? And why did he say "adopted"?

"That's amazing," I respond. But I am walking away, wondering why today, of all days, this ogre of a fellow began to speak. I turn around, needing to ask him. "What's your name by the way?"

Looking up, into me, he says plain as his name: "Joe."

I cannot believe it. I feel like he is not just Joe. And not just Joe as I have named my son. Or Joseph like Jesus' earthly father. He is - my Old Joe. He came to me, from California and Belmont, and found me today. And he spoke to me in spite of the fact that I would not speak to him. Here I have passed him, time after time, never believing him worthy of eye contact. Never thinking that he had a story, or a name. But instead of feeling shame, today I felt - connected. Connected to something that was not mine to question. Just believe, I kept telling myself. Just keep your heart open and believe.

After checking out, I looked down the aisle and saw him, looking into me with not a pleasant or an unpleasant look, just, looking at me, two eyes gazing like he knew that I saw him standing there, my Old Joe, for the very first time today.

I loaded the kids back into the car, and as I did, the back garage door that is connected to the market opened up, and out he came, but this time, he did not look at me, and I did not look at him. I only saw him out of the corner of my eye. I didn't want to ruin the magic. I felt like I could jinx God, somehow, by overstretching the symbolism. Addy pointed and said, very quietly, "There's Joe." And I looked over to him, his back to us, and he shook off a quick wave before he closed the garage door behind him. How he heard her small voice, I have no idea, but he did and I saw him with my own eyes, believing like a child that God had just opened my eyes and waved to me.

Thinking about Old Joe, I drove towards Rotary Park, where I had promised to take the kids before heading home. And there, driving west down Wabash Ave, I saw God shining so blindingly bright. He was there - that big radiant sun shining inside a cloudless band of light just below a full sky of clouds. There was a reason I didn't buy sunglasses the day before. There was a reason why I was thinking about the majesty of the constant sun and wondering why me, fallible earth, has turned away for so very long. There was a reason it did not rain today. I needed to see this sunset moment. I needed to let His full light blind me then give me sight I never knew I had. I almost wanted to cry, not because of the light but because of His Light. At this moment, I was still unsure of why I felt the way I did, but I felt my heart. It was opening still.

I made a right on Koke Mill Road, and as I did, I looked up. Strangely, I saw something that just made me want to laugh. Made me want to almost dance, for some reason. I saw - a swan, flying over me. Just one. But a swan, big and white, its long neck led by that orange beak and casading through the air, wings as wide as a graceful tree, floating across my sky. "What the hell," I smiled, thinking about how I've never seen a swan flying, let alone, driving on a suburban road in Springfield, Illinois. My mind went back to Old Joe at the market, and I almost wished that it would have been a family of ducks, not a swan, that I had seen flying through the air. "Wouldn't that have been something," I thought to myself. But the swan is still good enough. I took it as a sign and appreciated that I looked up when I did.

Getting to the park, I felt freedom. The sky was turning orange and the kids were running, laughing. Not because of me. But because I brought them there, to a place where their imaginations and their bodies could be unleashed like breath into air, souls flying in the wind. I thought of the ducklings. I thought of the swan. I thought of the poems I have written, all my winged and windless poems and I marveled at how, maybe, just maybe, they might all connect, somehow. I looked above me, and I saw, literally, a kite flying in the sky, coming from nowhere. High above, soaring like a bird, its kite tail flapping in excitement, I could not see the string or where the kite was coming from. It flew above us for the whole hour we stayed at the park. I tried to take a picture of it on my phone, but my camera wouldn't capture its image. It was as if believing was enough, having faith that yes, perhaps a Dad in the neighborhood behind those houses, beyond those trees, earlier in the day, tied a kite to a stake in the ground so that his children might look up from their window and see how wind blows life high above us. God called him to do that and God called me there to witness, not to see him but to just believe him. My heart opened wider and I laughed with my kids at the park tonight, believing God was there in the fields and laughing with us.

After getting home and eating our kimchi and rice dinner, I remembered that tomorrow is Addy's field trip at school. I hadn't paid the $5.50 for the show ticket (we are going to see The Very Hungry Caterpillar tomorrow at the Sangamon Auditorium) and I remembered that I have no cash on hand. Wouldn't it be amusing, I thought, searching for loose cash and change in my bedroom, if somehow I just came across a five dollar bill somewhere in these drawers? Shuffling through the junk, I looked, drawer by drawer. Then, opening the top drawer of my nightstand, there it was. Underneath the Bible I began to read last week. A crumpled five dollar bill, and a single. God gave me fifty extra cents, just for shits and giggles. I literally laughed out loud. A real, genuine laugh. A real genuine "Thank you" to God. How in the world...I had no idea.

At this moment, I could not wait to write. Could not wait to get the kids in bed, sleeping, so that I could begin writing. Writing of this day that I will honestly pray tonight that I may remember forever, lyrics of a single day that tell the story of my whole missing life. I wonder what words will come to me tonight. I dance inside, excited to listen and write with my heart open.

After watching videos on the computer, Addy's 3 year old whining landed her one less book. So we had just one book to read tonight. Getting settled in her room, she whines,"I just don't know what book to read." So I ask, "Do you want me to pick out a book?" She nods her head. I get her pillows arranged and walk over to her small bookcase. And there it is. The very first book in front, sitting up inside her book bin on top of her bookcase is 'Make Way for Ducklings.' I hadn't even thought about it. Hadn't considered even looking for it, despite the day's events. But I smiled, knowing, and I sat with Addy and began to read.

On the first page, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are flying east, looking for the perfect place to call home. Mr. Mallard only wants to make Mrs. Mallard happy, but she is unsure, quite trite in fact, because she doesn't want to live in places with foxes or turtles. She's a picky thing, Mrs. Mallard is. And I think of Danny and me, and I wonder if maybe this story is about us. I turn the page and learn that yes, it is.

Though I have read this story over a dozen times, and probably more, to Addy, I forgot until I turned the page that Mr. and Mrs. Mallard do find a place to settle. A place called...Boston. I read this and I began to laugh again. There is no better reaction. And at this point, there is no other reaction left. I must just laugh. But then, it is the next page, the next turn of words and images that startles me, shakes me so deeply that I break out into a huge laugh that immediately turns into quiet laughing sobbing tears of joy. Pure, real joy and wonder. I turn the page and there before me is a picture of - a swan. This is the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Mallard decide that indeed, Boston is the place for them to live. The place for them to stay. In the Public Garden, through the Charles River, floats this boat, a giant swan statue as its bow, and the people on the boat throw them bits of bread. How kind, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard think. We will follow this swan and stay here in Boston. That is the premise of the book. A few pages later is the picture that Old Joe referred to. Where Mrs. Mallard holds her head up high as she marches her ducklings across a busy Boston street, proud of her ducklings, and, now thinking of it, proud of herself as well. I feel her swelling pride as if it were my own. I wonder if she, Mrs. Mallard, knows that the policeman's name is Michael, a lumbering, protective figure that honestly looks quite similar to Old Joe - did he tell her in a way that she just knew? I think of that swan, flying over me today, taking our life to Boston, that winged poem soaring into my air and onto this very page tonight. Where else will she lead me? I know that I cannot know. That is all that I know.

I can only close the night thinking of last week, when I took Addy and Joey to Tom Madonia East Park on Lake Springfield on a gorgeous sunny afternoon, another rainless day, for three hours full of playing in the hills and swings of a place we won't call home for much longer. We stopped and bought a loaf of bread, and we began our long afternoon feeding the geese down on the dock, there over the waters, throwing bread to them, all three of us loving our lives in that moment. And out of place amongst that hungry flock of geese who were swarming all around us, was a mother and a father mallard, coming to us, literally from nowhere. I was the only one who could feed them, because they swam in waters further than the kids could throw. Only I had the strength to throw bread far enough for them to reach. And so I did, because they just remained there, paddling behind the geese, waiting for me to stand up tall and reach out to them. I remember telling Addy, "Look! They're just like Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!" and wondering where they must have come from. And just like that, I know.