Momastery » Page 12

Chase and I found ourselves in the middle of a traffic teachable moment yesterday, during which I used every bit of my self control to avoid sticking my head out the window and screaming into the Universe all the curse words I know. ALL of them. Glad I didn’t.

Remember the Onion Man?

Love,

Last weekend, Chase and I were grocery shopping in the produce section and he was having a blast weighing each new bag of vegetables I collected. I handed him a bag of tomatoes and he walked over to the scale and waited patiently in line. As I watched, an elderly man walked up behind Chase, scowled at him for a moment, and stepped in front of him, bumping Chase out of the way. Chase looked shocked and scared. I left my cart and walked over to Chase, stood by him and said loudly, “Are you all right honey? I saw what that man did to you. That was very, very wrong and rude.” Chase said nothing, the Grumpy Old man said nothing. Chase and I held hands and waited.

When the man was finished weighing his bag, he turned around quickly and all of his onions spilled out of his bag and on to the dirty floor. The three of us froze for a moment. Then Chase looked up at me and I motioned toward the floor. Chase and I got down on our hands and knees and started collecting onions while the old man grouchily and grudgingly accepted them from our hands and put them back into his bag. After Chase and I retrieved the last onion, the old man walked away. Chase and I did too, and we didn’t discuss the event until we got back in the car.

On the drive home, Chase said through tears, “Mommy, I’ve had a frustrating day. That man cut right in front of me and that was wrong. And we had to help him pick up his onions! Why did we do that? That didn’t make any sense.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Chase, that man was acting horribly wasn’t he? He seemed to have a very angry heart. I’m so sorry that happened to you. But if we didn’t help him with his onions, do you think we would have made his heart softer or angrier?”

Angrier, Chase said.

“Since we did help him, do you think that might have made his heart softer?”

“Maybe,” Chase said.

“But you know what, Chase? I understand how you feel. I didn’t want to help that man with his onions. You know what I wanted to do?”

“What?”

“I wanted to kick him really hard in the shin. I was very angry with that man for treating you badly. But sometimes doing what we really want to do, if it’s going to add more anger, isn’t the right thing to do. Even if it feels good at the time. If we wouldn’t have helped that old man, we might have felt good for a second, but then I bet we would have felt really, really yucky about ourselves for a long time. You and I, we have a lot of love to share. Maybe that man doesn’t have much. Maybe we offered him some today. People who behave badly still need love. ”

And then this brilliant smile broke out on Chase’s face that was the smile of a heart recognizing the truth. It was a smile of a promise kept. It was the best smile I have ever seen, on any of my children. It was a smile that said: Oh, I see. Sometimes we actually do what we talk about doing. And this is how it feels.

God, it was a good moment. It may have been my best mommy moment ever.

Thanks, Grumpy Old Onion Man.

Peace,

Dear Gail,

I saw you in Charlotte this past weekend. I was on stage with the beautiful preacher-man and there was a big, big crowd in front of me – but I saw you there. When I spoke of God’s love and the sun you closed your eyes and nodded your beautiful head and I saw your lips make the word “amen” again and again. I love that word – amen. You helped me, Gail. Because I could see that we were riding a wave together, you and me. You in the crowd and me on the stage- we were riding together. And so when I felt like I should quiet down already, that maybe I’d said enough, I kept riding with you anyway. I kept getting truthier and truthier and the truthier I got the more heads started nodding and then folks started crying and that was all because of you, Gail. Your nodding head and your amens made me brave. Your eyes made me calm.

I tried to grab your hand after the service, but my escorts swept me off stage fast. They put me upstairs in a room and told me to stay, but when they left I broke out of there. I sneaked down the fire escape and back into the huge room to find you and the others. The others were still there, which made the risk worth it- but you were gone. There was no nodding you and there was no regal, beautiful one with you. I wondered who the regal, beautiful one was. She looked like you.

The night I got home from North Carolina, I searched our Facebook page for your face. I found you there. What are the chances, Gail? I clicked on your name and I read your wall. My sister had been there already. You two had already connected. You’d hugged each other at the event. What are the chances, Gail?

I friended you. You wrote to me. I knew you were a writer after reading your first sentence. I wrote back and said YOU ARE SO ALIVE. Your writing is so ALIVE. You are a WRITER.

You already knew you were a writer, but you thanked me anyway. Then you told me that you’d rearranged your chemo, your healing treatment, to come hear me speak. Because you thought listening to me would be a healing treatment, too. And you told me that you’d brought your daughter along with you. She was the regal, beautiful one at your side. What a lucky woman she is, to call you mother.

You thanked me for writing, for loving, for showing up, for fighting. I thanked you for doing the same things. We both wished like hell we were thanking each other over tea on my couch or yours. We wished we were thanking each other’s eyes and holding each other’s hands - but the next best thing was still pretty damn good. Reading you, Gail, is pretty damn good.

I needed to give you something, Gail. I needed to give you everything. Out of gratitude and awe…for your strength and frailty and grace and dignity and for, as our sister Maya says, making me proud to spell my name w-o-m-a-n.

I didn’t know what it could be. What could I give you, Gail? What could I give you, that would say all of those things? All of those things that I mean so deeply and urgently and truly? Those things that I mean more than I mean anything else at all?

And then it came, Gail. It came to me. What I have for you. It came in the mail. What are the chances?

This is the first copy of my book, Gail. I’ve been working on it for thirty six years. All of me’s in there, Gail. And that’s exactly what I wanted to give you. All of me.

It’s the only first final copy of my first book that I’ll ever have. More will come later, Gail, but there will never be another first one. The first one is for you.

It’s for you, Gail. Don’t worry, I don’t need it. I already know what it says. It’s good, Gail. I worked really hard on it. Not as hard as you’re working these days, but hard. It’s my story. There are parts of yours in there too, I think.

I wrote my phone number on the inside of the cover, Gail. Please use it when the doctor calls to tell you that it’s all gone. Please use it when the doctor calls to tell you that you beat it. That it’s nothing but a memory. That it’s nothing but the hot coals that made the soles of your feet tougher and quicker and that made the moon shine brighter upon that beautiful nodding, amen-ing head of yours.

Amen, Gail.

Visit her here.

Love, Glennon

Publicity Whore

Feb 262013

Why do you tell these things? Why do you share the most intimate details of your heart and soul? Why do artists, writers, bloggers, DO THAT?

It’s gotta be for attention. You’re a narcissist. Neurotic. Exhibitionist. Publicity whore.

(This “publicity whore” is a new dagger being wielded- a shiny, sharp one. Why do women, ever, ever, ever want to call each other whores? Baffling.)

Maybe. Maybe we are those things.

Or maybe it’s this:

In everyday life, on the news, at play dates and coffee dates and real dates and PTA meetings and even at church – we discuss the details. Details like politics and religion and diets and money and home decor and jobs and other people’s personalities. I don’t know why I’m wired this way – I often wish I wasn’t – but discussing these details makes me want to stick forks into my differently sized eyeballs.

I think a lot of folks have this eye-fork problem when discussing details, and I have a theory about why that is. I think it’s because discussing the details – the surface stuff that we are allowed to discuss in real life – makes us feel lonely. Different. Not quite understood. Because for each person, the surface stuff is different. We all have different details, different jobs, money situations, religions, politics, family dynamics, pasts, goals, talents, homes, and personalities.

Since these details about us are different, when we discuss only these things we feel, at our core, different from other people. Lonely.

She has it so much easier, better, bigger. At home, at work, in her own skin. I am alone. I am different.

But from spending hours every day reading letters from women all over the world, I have learned that our essentials are the same. Maybe not our details, but our essentials.

We are not, at our core, different from other people. We’re not. We are all one.

We all feel hope and pain and agony and triumph and loneliness and fear. We all lose love and friends and our minds and our religions from time to time. We all cry and laugh and hate and love fiercely. We are each a dueling mix of good and bad. We are each so, so terrified and so wickedly brave. As Whitman says- We are human, we are big. We contain multitudes.

The details make us people, but the essentials make us human. And when we share the deep stuff, the real stuff, the hidden stuff- we learn that the details are just hurdles we must get past in order to get to the essentials, in order to get to that place of vulnerability, that truthiest place where we learn that at our cores, We Are The Same.

And knowing that makes us less lonely. And feeling less lonely makes us braver. And brave people make a better, more beautiful world.

I write about these deep, hidden, essential things because I want to feel less lonely and I want others to feel less lonely, too. I write because I want to be brave and I want others to be brave, too.

I write because it’s my little, big way of making the world more beautiful.

Love,