Beauty from Storm

Yesterday morning arrived in gusty, wet glory.

When I lived in Seattle, waking up to gray morning after gray morning, nothing but sunshine seemed beautiful. But here, where sunshine is the norm, a really stormy day almost takes my breath away with its power and awe-full majesty. Sheets of rain cascade and collide. Leaves--mauve and orange and gold--scatter like trails of magic, effortlessly puffed down the street. Delicate tree branches bend and sway, threatening to snap at every moment in their reckless dance. It is inspiring as well as terrifying to watch.

But what struck me most was what was left in the wake of the wind and rain. When the loud forces of destruction quieted, I went tromping around with my camera and galoshes, noticing the tiny, quirky miracles left behind.

Things like mossy green baby-tears springing up between paving stones, the soft blooming to surround and overcome the hard.

Or the fact that almost all the maple leaves were stuck face-down to the sidewalk, leaving their stems sticking straight up into the air like the tails of curious puppies. 

What I thought was most interesting of all, though, was the sight of our lawn. I looked out the window and noticed that the helter-skelter whipping and tearing of the storm-force had mingled dead autumn leaves with flowers from our bougainvillea vine.

Life mingled with death, the shedding of a tree's old coat beside pink crepe butterfly-delicate petals. The dying of the old year beside the flowering of the new. Autumn and spring scattered side-by-side. It made me think of Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Flowers. 

It also made me think that even November storms that make the house creak, that strip the trees of all their finery, that force in bare branches and winter before I'm quite ready for them, can leave beauty behind them as well. Gales can even bring the beauty, sometimes: the same violent  winds that destroy can scatter the lawn with flowers.

Maybe--perhaps even this--the beauty wouldn't come without the storm.

Death and Song Lyrics

Very early on the morning of November 6th, my grandma passed away peacefully, her wracked, skeletal body stilling and ending eleven months of daily burial.

In the heat of caregiving, when all you can feel is strained muscles, all you can taste is sweat on your upper lip, there is no room for poetry, and the people who sit off to the side in armchairs, seeing the big picture and attempting ameliorating words, feel like clichés.

But when the whistle blows at last and the laborers collapse in a heap, there is a sudden silence. Suddenly, without work to do, your hands twist idly, mind freezes in the cold strange silence, and with long flabby stretches of time and no inclination to industry, then the poetry comes back to usefulness. 

I made one CD mix for my car, a jumbled mix of songs that plays in endless circles as I drive. This poetry help to shout down the emptiness, to bring at least rhythm, if not sense, to the cacophonous thoughts. Here are a few of the most played.

Paradise, by Coldplay

Life goes on and gets so heavy

The wheel breaks the butterfly

Every tear a waterfall

In the night, the stormy night, she’d close her eyes

In the night, the stormy night, away she’d fly

And dream of paradise…

Run, by Snow Patrol

Light up, light up

As if you have a choice

Even if you cannot hear my voice

I’ll be right beside you, dear…

Desperado, by The Eagles

Desperado, you ain’t getting any younger

Your pain and your hunger,

They’re driving you home…

In the moment of pain, we screech or grunt without thinking. When it’s quiet and still again, though, there is time to search out words for the shapeless animal howls. Through poetry, our own or others', we weave severed tendons into a tapestry that bleeds and tells the story of bleeding. 

How do you make sense of the senseless? What methods of expression are helpful to you?

Zucchini Cake

I don't know what's up with the baking analogies. I don't even like to bake. But I have this thought that people are like cake.

So, this is a hard admission: as you may have deduced by now, I'm a people-pleaser. I've always wanted to be a chocolate cake.

Free image courtesy of stock.xchng and nosheep

Since childhood, I've tried to be the "good kid"--pleasing parents, Sunday school teachers, kids I wanted to be friends with, kids I didn't want to be friends with, college professors, people at church, random strangers at Starbucks. My code of conduct went something like, "Fly under the radar, don't irritate people, do what you're told, appease." Because people only want chocolate cakes, right? Chocolate cake people make the best friends, students, children, right?

Chocolate cake people: plural noun. Punctual, humble, not only faithful in but excited about prayer, churchgoing, service activities. Don't talk too much, don't talk too much about themselves, modest, demure, good grades, walk the straight and narrow. Also hospitable, good conversationalists, and don't go outside looking frumpy. Ever.

So if people only want chocolate cakes, I have to be one, right? To get approval (and what else could be worth getting?) I've aimed for perfection, or as close to it as possible. Other people's displeasure was my fault, my failure.

Here's the trouble. I'm not a chocolate cake. I think I might not even count as cake. I get this frequent, sneaking suspicion that I'm made of something else entirely--something green and lumpy that won't stick together and certainly won't fluff in the oven. Something like...zucchini.

Free image courtesy of stock.xchng and soultga

Zucchini person: singular noun. Lags just a few minutes late for every activity. Talks too much about self and sometimes snorts at own jokes. Sometimes doesn't feel like praying. Wakes up without makeup and sometimes on the wrong side of the bed. Worries about job, friends, future.

Well, zucchini is obviously an unacceptable basis for the making of cakes, especially when all cakes are supposed to be chocolate. So my solution has been to slap some nice, thick frosting on top and smear it around. See? Picture-perfect cake.

Free image courtesy of stock.xchng and coachen

Then there's the broiler.

A little summer heat is one thing; if your inch-thick coat of frosting starts to melt, you just patch the thin spots. You can still hide what's underneath. But sitting under a 500-degree hot wire for long enough is more than any coat of frosting can bear. A hot wire like eleven months of caregiving, for instance.

Hard times have a way of stripping away your layers of fakeness. Insincerity soon melts under the flame. And what's left for people to see is...zucchini. Embarrassing, un-chocolate, imperfect, vulnerable.

This is the point, in my imagination, where people scream and go, "Ew, gross! Someone get that unacceptable vegetable out of here!"

But, to my dumbfounded astonishment, that's not what I've seen happen. The more I can't hide my true substance, the more I show people that my cake is far from chocolate, the more I'm let in on a secret.

Other people's cakes aren't, either.

Vulnerability is like an amoeba. It multiplies itself. Numerous times in the last few months, I've had the shocking experience of hearing people--even people I regard as the gold standard of chocolate cake--reveal their failings, their doubts, their awkwardnesses, their fears. Almost no one sails through life in complete confidence (and those who do are ignoring some things). No one marches into battle without sweaty palms. No one looks in the mirror every morning, smiles a toothpaste-commercial smile, and whispers, "go get 'em, chocolate."

Vulnerability also brings people together. I used to think, not very long ago, that I really had to be perfect for people to like me. What absolutely stuns me is the slow discovery that perfection intimidates--and honesty is true beauty. People don't like you less when you show them your hurt, your awkwardness, your doubt. Honesty levels the playing field. It expresses trust, need, connection. The ugly green truth is what allows deep, real connection to bloom.

Free image courtesy of stock.xchng and kyra

So, here's my confession. I'm not made of chocolate. Sometimes, with all my zucchini-greenness going on, I think I make a miserable excuse for cake at all. You don't have to like it. But that's what I'm made of. And now that that's out in the open, I'm glad I no longer have to spend my life patching the frosting.

Ever felt like a zucchini cake in a chocolate-cake world? What have you discovered about revealing that to other people?