“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
Pema Chodron

It was Independence Day 2020 when we first looked at the Ohio property. G and I drove from Massachusetts, X and L from Michigan. Meeting here, on the Ohio River, we looked at the three buildings inside and out, to the extent that we could.

It was July 17^th that G received the keys, and July 18^th when the deed was recorded.

Recently I spent some time reading through my blog posts and scrapbook pages that represent the past year. As some of you know, I have been creating scrapbooks since G’s brother was in utero, and the extent of it today is almost an embarrassment. But oh well. I keep doing it. Largely photographs-only these days, made into collage, and stored away. Originally I thought they would be for G (and for X to see how we lived our lives when he was busy, for him to catch up and co-opt as family memories), but so many ships have sailed since then. Now I think they may be just for me. I certainly am the one who looks at them, who marvels at them at times. A number of years ago I took out all of the writing and made it into a giant manuscript, just in case I couldn’t keep towing all of the books around or they burned to the ground. At one point X scanned all of them. But he has not been up to date for quite some time.

I mixed thoughts with scraps in order to hold something ephemeral, which of course is impossible, but I did it thinking I understood its limits. I could not bring the grains of sand, but I could bring the ideas, the images and receipts. But did I?

The scope of what is not captured almost renders me speechless; the fact that it seems to speak only to me does too. It is said that even a simple glass of water seen by three people will be a different glass of water. Of course a lifetime of images will be. No amount of positive intent on my part will make G see images of herself the way I do. When I opened these books with her last, it tore at my heart to hear her speak such ill of her little self.

But I am nothing if not a completer-of-projects, even one that has no end, and so somehow I keep putting things into these binders that I still keep covering with fabric and a ribbon to close. I keep thinking I will stop, but then my photographs would have no home. And there would be no tangible place to house memories of our life. My life.

When X said he was “looking outside” our life for his, G was still very young. I had two thoughts, one to him: don’t you want to read the baby books before you go, just to make sure? And one to me: how will I reconcile the baby books with his departure, if that is what it ends up being? I still recall my interior confusion. Do I have to re-write the story? Is there less love in the pages already written with this turn of events? Do they need to be edited, pages removed? In time I realized that, no, in fact, there was honesty in them already having been put to press, so to speak. I cannot alter what already was written. I cannot make us un-love one another or lessen the loss with a few careful strokes.

While I thought we would look at these books together and see the same story, I also believed that I would have a whole family, not a divided one. What surprises me most, however, is that even I see these pages differently in retrospect. I see my naiveté, my youth, my urgency to be a good parent, my desire to be enough for my family and save some shreds for myself. I see my naked love. I also see people and moments I wish to forget. Maybe record-keeping yearns for ongoing editing just as our consciousness desires to retell stories, recreating memory to suit. Maybe remembering with any level of accuracy hurts too much. Maybe part of healing is, for many, rewriting. But how much of it was already written?

Contributions to the scrapbooks slimmed dramatically until we made the decision to move. Then all of a sudden I had a greater desire to record again.

*

In light of our first anniversary, I spent a rainy summer morning looking through the Ohio books. The scrapbook began in March. Before we had any idea what was in store for us as a globe, much less as two people trying to make their way out of roles we knew (parent, child) into roles we didn’t (adult-parent, adult-child). Especially since G eschewed the traditional model and timeline of college that spews said adult-child back out at twenty-one-ish. Especially since these choices and other mitigating factors left us both with no true home base.

It was obvious we needed to do something.

Turning each page, I found myself looking for elements to help me understand where I find myself now. Maktub is an interesting premise to consider here, now, again. How much of this decision was really ours? G found the church, rectory and convent on a commercial real estate site. The conclusion to move forward was made partly because we really didn’t know what else to do, and none of the other options to date had panned out. We were waiting for something to stick.

It is important to note that this is and always has been G’s project. I am here because I don’t know what else to do. I remain in this interpersonal role-limbo as much as I am in limbo existentially. Re-reading my writing, I hear how I believe this experience will manifest something, but living it, this is not readily apparent. In some ways it is safe to say that I am the same as I was this time last year. True, I have learned how to scrap metal [a story in its own right], reverse a trailer fairly well, navigate getting screwed by a contractor, and live somewhere that is not an obvious fit. I have learned there are friends and beauty to be found everywhere.

During this year I have also felt more lost than I have in decades. This kind of lost reminds me of a shadowy childhood memory of being sent into something by my mother and knowing there is literally no way out. I have to be brave, and if I am not brave, I have to fake it. Even if I am breaking apart inside. Even if I feel unsafe. Even if I feel like I want to fall apart. I cannot. I will not. I am not allowed to.

If this borderline-unconscious part of me gets triggered, I have found the feeling to be so tender I can hardly breathe. I am just trying to swim here. Don’t push me under. The water is too deep and my feet can’t reach the ground.

*

One of the primary lessons of our role-limbo is that my child is an adult, albeit nascent. And she knows how to handle things. She is a firefighter and an emergency medical responder. A few days ago she responded to a call in which the woman likely was already dead, but G gave her CPR and pulled out the AED. Later she interacted with someone who overdosed. She can handle things.

But. I am her mom. And I haven’t learned this lesson yet. Or very well.

Or I forget. Really. Easily.

My well-honed tools of being her safety net are needed less and less. My instinct to jump in—or worse, be deaf to her insistence that she’s got it—have led us to several altercations. Most recently when the water main got hit on her job, I called someone I trust who gave me the same number to call that G and her people already called. Suffice it to say the guy was not happy when I was the third caller for the same problem. His wife was also not happy that his phone was ringing off the hook, he needed to tell me. And when I extended my hand to thank him, he did not take it.

G looked at me as if to say, see what I mean? This is my life. Leave it alone.

In so doing, G and this stranger activated that part of me that is so tender I can hardly breathe. They actually may have been responsible for pulling it out of my unconscious so I could see it.

*

So why am I here? A question I keep being asked. A question with practical and metaphysical undertones.

Back when X said he was looking outside our life for his, I read Pema Chodron for the first time. A Buddhist nun who essentially translates for the lay audience, she gave me the gift of seeing my pain as opportunity, “Obstacles… are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck. What may appear to be an arrow or a sword, we can actually experience as a flower.”

Picking up the pieces, I became the best mommy-daddy-person I could. Nothing else was as important. It has occupied and enriched me and sent me far afield from familiar ground, longer and deeper than I ever imagined. I am a job-completer, as I have said.

[For what it’s worth, my contractor wasn’t. Not anything. Not one room, one window, one wall of siding kind-of-completer. Literally everything was left partially complete. Looking at progressive photos of our progress, I see this habit of crazy incompletion.]

Drywall was 75% up in April. Today the mud and sanding are 50% complete but with a new wonderful team whose work is really good.

There is so much more to do. Just to have a place to live.

For the first time, G moved many of our storage boxes in the church. She is beginning to set up her studio. The other half of the boxes on the altar belong to my future home. All of the items in the sacristy will go in the convent when it’s time to make a kitchen.

But when I walk around the convent, what I truly don’t know is: will this actually be mine when it is complete?

*

My life has been determined by steps of protection. Meanwhile life is making me feel less and less protected, more and more vulnerable. I am in a region where a woman’s voice counts for little. I am an age where I am less and less desirable. There are times when I feel invisible and unheard while I am present and speaking.

There are lessons here that I am being forced to learn. And to that end, there is no doubt I will be expected by the universe to stay here until I learn them.

Things I know: I want to be useful and loved, productive and successful by my own metric. I want to leave any space I occupy – no matter where it is – better than I found it. I want to be a responsible and caring adult-parent to my adult-child. And I really don’t mind how that manifests. I need to learn to trust that she really can handle it. I know she can. And I need to keep working at things that matter to me.

I want a home again. I have wanted one all of my life. I have made them out of small spaces since I was quite young. It doesn’t have to be the convent. It doesn’t have to be in Ohio. It doesn’t have to be near G. But one day, I need to be out of boxes. I do not want to continue to live boxed up.

*

Also: I am okay doing pretty much any job, for her or for anyone.

Years ago I had a job I loved as a greeter/receptionist. I had a goal that I would try to make my encounter with each person the best it could be. I was told I was overqualified, but I didn’t care. It was one of the most satisfying jobs I have ever had. I met all kinds of people from literally every percentage point on the 1-100 scale, including the top 1 and the lowest 1. I met people who were celebrities in their own fields, unknown in others, and people who were known globally. Most times I met their kids too. Only for a few minutes. I talked with people on the phone, all with the same mission in my heart. To make sacred my connection to each of these souls, if possible, for a moment.

Obviously I didn’t succeed all of the time. But I kept trying. And in so many ways, that is the same job description I have today, it’s just that I don’t get to leave work when I am done. It is every minute, every day. And sometimes I feel like I don’t have the energy. I am exhausted just showing up.

I get hurt when there is no reciprocity. When I don’t understand. When I cannot hear or be heard. When I know I have to stay. When I have no choice and I am not allowed to go. Even if I am breaking into pieces.

I have become the strict boss of myself that my mother was.

I see that this is fresh work for me. To tell myself that I am safe now. That this tender part I have protected so well as to be virtually unreachable may not need her bossy bodyguard.

Stronger, wiser parts of me may be able to step in first and say, G has got this. She can handle it. Just breathe and let her sort it out.

I am free to go; I am choosing now. In so doing, I discover I want to stay for a while longer. Too much remains incomplete for my comfort. But where will I be next July? Is it written or isn’t it? Does it even matter?

Sometimes I think it isn’t really what I am doing, but what I am excavating.

It is the layers beneath the layers. It is the terror first and then the recovery from being thrown out of my beloved nests just as I begin to get comfortable.

Maybe it is proof that I am alive, human and awake.

Arrow to flower.

Amen.