My brother was 17 when he ran away from home. I was 23 at the time, well into my eating disorder, and already estranged from my parents. Yet, I spiraled into panic with the rest of my family and photocopied missing person posters, reviewed tidal charts with the police to determine where his body might wash up, and slept in my childhood bedroom with my 15 year-old sister. My parents and sisters did other unimaginable tasks like decipher a cryptic postcard my brother sent from the road which led to the discovery of his abandoned car in Santa Cruz.
We banded together the five of us, found ways to cope, managed the influx of visitors day and night and the emotion of candlelight vigils held in our living room, and reminded each other to breathe. And when my brother came walking home a week later, all the worse for wear having traveled overnight by bus from Los Angeles, we grabbed each other in a great big hug, relieved to be six again. Over the days that followed, a subtle softening occurred between parents and children while the curtains of our inner workings parted ever so slightly, exposing everyday challenges that had always hummed along, barely a vibration, before shattering the windows around us.
Families aren't the slightest bit transparent; they are impossible to see into until something of this magnitude happens and friends bear witness to mothers and fathers and children falling to their knees in anguish or in grace. For my family, my brother's disappearance and surprise return brought about a gentle buffer of amnesty, if only for that brief season of terror and relief, and rather than peer at one another through the familiar thicket of history and pride and disappointment, we saw each other as breakable, mortal human beings made of bones, blood, fear, and love. And when that chapter ended and we returned in earnest to our routines and preconceptions and estrangements, we carried equally within us a token of that hard-won innocence as the curtains slowly fell back into place, shielding us once more from the eyes of the world.
In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver writes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
In my hospital writings, I chronicled my family's visits and documented my pain at being so nakedly exposed. Without the security of my job, my relationships, and my house, I was a terribly frightened, fragile young woman living at the mercy of well-meaning but nonetheless unfamiliar medical staff. Not a family, indeed. Years of wall-building and self-protection were no match for the shame of wearing hospital clothing and weeping in the corner during meal time. The girl my family had always known was nowhere to be seen, yet I remained to accept her visitors.
At the time, it seemed to me that everything I had built and worked for was gone. When I was discharged from the hospital for the last time I didn't even have a home to return to. But, I was determined to make it on my own, and so I did.
Re-building genuine ties with my family took much longer than re-establishing a home for myself as my treatment eventually ended and real life began again. Even during my pregnancy I maintained my distance, calling to share the news that I was having a girl, but keeping my private fears and questions to myself. It wasn't until I was in labor, and experiencing the sheer uproarious pain of childbirth, that I finally called out for my mom.
It astonishes me how gradually the seams of a relationship pull apart, stitch by broken stitch, yet how quickly they can be mended. The arrival of my daughter brought about more than just a resurgence of my own vitality, it opened doors that had been sealed shut for years. Just as my brother's casual stroll back into our lives fused the shattered pieces of our hearts, so did the appearance of one small baby girl, reminding us with her newness that anything is possible.
I think about what Mary Oliver writes: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting." To me, this instruction falls in direct opposition to what I've always believed to be my duty to my family and the world. There is a right way forward, often aligned with the path of least resistance, and it is to be followed without question. Black is on one side, white is on the other, and together they meet in sharp contrast, forming a long straight line down the middle. Room for error is nothing more than a vacuum of time and space.
I haven't lived in a straight line, nor has anyone I've ever met, yet I spend much of my time crawling through the desert, repenting.
Letting the "soft animal" of my body "love what it loves" is another inconceivable concept. It is always with great shame that I explore my thoughts and feelings, nervously reaching into the shadows of my mind and heart, afraid I'll find darkness where light is supposed to be. Though no one can see it from the outside, I writhe in discomfort and despair when I unearth genuine feelings of love and concern for others. Attachment feels like a nightmare until the soft lullaby of trust comes drifting through and I reawaken.
Every once in a while the jaws of my earliest confusion clamp shut and I'm suddenly locked in mid-step. Perhaps my heart has opened itself too fully to another, or my mind has traveled too far into unknown territory. No matter the consequences, the journey often ends in regret, and so I have adapted to hiding away, lonely as this is. Just today I found myself burrowing into my dark, quiet place -- that tiny little corner where, even if someone peers in through the windows, I cannot be seen.
And yet...
Sometimes when I'm hiking out in the clear, blue open, I'll stop for a moment to feel the wind. I'll stand atop a rock or plant myself in the grass, throw my head back, close my eyes, and let my hair and clothes whip around me. In these moments I'm listening. Listening to a voice that can't be heard otherwise. It doesn't speak to me like family, and it doesn't sound like a friend; it doesn't even sound like the narrator who guides me through my day, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes impatiently. Instead it is calm, peaceful, and assured, and comes from the very center of my being.
Even though I can't yet access this deep wisdom as I wander aimlessly through my life, alternately hidden and exposed, I know that it exists. I only have to be still for a moment to hear the quiet voice speaking. And the older I get the more I realize that it is always there, gently nudging and nurturing me along my way, whether I can hear it or not. It gets lost in the rush and color and pace of daily life, often supplanted completely by outside noise, but it is as constant as the thrum of my own heart beat, and just as necessary.
Admittedly, I still try my hardest to live in the absence of my own divine intercedence, resisting the urge to surrender with a kind of poisonous power that astounds me at times. But, what is life if not the opportunity to untangle the thread of who we are from where we've been so that we can sew something entirely new?
I feel blessed to know the love of family and friends, and to have the presence of mind to appreciate myself every once in a while, flaws and all. And I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a child while peripherally exploring the mysterious recesses of my own heart and soul -- learning worlds about life and love and family in the process.
More than anything, though, the most amazing lesson emerging from my tentative dance is the fact that what make this life special are the very things in me that make it possible. This knowledge brings with it a delicate coating of bliss and the lightest dusting of forgiveness, reminding me, when I falter and lose my way, why I'm here.
~ Katie
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, 1992.
Title quote: George Eliot
