Today on my Facebook newsfeed a post from my former blog popped up. It was written four years ago today, in the fall, often a time of deep reflection and introspection for me. I'm posting it here today because the words still ring true. --- Sometimes I encounter a song that simultaneously leaves me breathless with desire and lying in a puddle of grief on the floor. Lately this song has been “Blood” by The Middle East. It randomly played on my Pandora, and there was no turning back. It has been an obsession not unlike my days of Pearl Jam and Lisa Loeb, and later Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, an obsession requiring plays on repeat and memorization of lyrics about blame and death and family. It is a song with poetic words scrawled across a canvas of percussion and voices and the suffering that is life. It’s the kind of song with a melody that sticks around, a rhythm that beats existential thoughts from my brain moving to my heart. Lately I’ve been thinking of my childhood. Fall and harvest do that to me. I remember trips to the field to deliver sandwiches and chips to my dad and Uncle Gary. I can feel the hum of the combine as I rode a round or two with them, breathing in the dust and the death. It was fall when my Uncle Gary left this earth. I can picture his frail body on my wedding day, just months before cancer stole him from us. During fall, especially, I miss him. During fall I miss my high school days when Friday nights included sleepovers after the big football game. I miss my college days when the reflected leaves painted the Cedar River with rust and golden brown. I miss our early married life when $2.14 bought us hot fudge sundaes from the McDonalds across the street. Of course hindsight is blurry at the edges, so in my memories I am perpetually beautiful and happy. I’ve also been pondering the impact that we leave on the lives of those around us. I think of the boy I loved when I was fifteen, the girl whose words wounded when I was seventeen, the young man who stole so much when I was nineteen, the college professor who spoke the words that pushed me to teach writing, the wandering soul who saw beauty in me in my early twenties. I remember Uncle Gary and his limitless kindness, Mrs. Lott who gave me Oreos at recess in 2nd grade, two grandmas who loved unconditionally, and now a husband who still holds my hand when we drive in the car. Simple moments and words that many of them may not even remember. But here I am, carrying those words and moments around, sometimes as unnecessary weight, trying to make sense of it all. The puzzle pieces don’t fit perfectly, but as I grow older, I see more of the picture. Now I’m raising a son with the soul of an artist, who sighs with passion in sync with me when we see trees sketched black against the sky of a sunset. And his old soul feels the pain, too, like his mother. So much beauty, so much suffering right here on this earth, wearing skin to hide our beating hearts. Life simultaneously inspires and erodes me…..a messy mixture of paradoxes to discern and diagnose. And that is life. That is blood.
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September 2020
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